Manchester United co-owner Jim Ratcliffe should apologise for his “offensive and wrong” comments that the UK has been colonised by immigrants, the UK prime minister has said.<\/p>\n
The billionaire, who is the founder and chairman of one of the world’s largest chemical companies, Ineos, said in an interview that “the UK has been colonised by immigrants”.<\/p>\n
Responding to a news story about the comments in a post on X, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer wrote: “Offensive and wrong. Britain is a proud, tolerant and diverse country.<\/p>\n
“Jim Ratcliffe should apologise.”<\/p>\n
Downing Street said Mr Ratcliffe’s remarks “play into the hands of those who want to divide our country” and called on him to “immediately” apologise.<\/p>\n
In an interview with Sky News, the Ineos owner said: “You can\u2019t have an economy with nine million people on benefits and huge levels of immigrants coming in.<\/p>\n
“I mean, the UK is being colonised. It\u2019s costing too much money. The UK has been colonised by immigrants.”<\/p>\n
Mr Ratcliffe added: “If you really want to deal with the major issues of immigration, with people opting to take benefits rather than working for a living, if you want to deal with that, then you are going to have to do some things which are unpopular and show some courage.”<\/p>\n
In the interview, Mr Ratcliffe said the prime minister was “maybe too nice”.<\/p>\n
He added: “It\u2019s a tough job, and I think you have to do some difficult things with the UK to get it back on track.”<\/p>\n
The Manchester United co-owner said Reform UK leader Nigel Farage was an “intelligent man” with “good intentions”.<\/p>\n
He added: “But in a way, you could say exactly the same about Keir when Keir came in.<\/p>\n
“I think it needs somebody who\u2019s prepared to be unpopular for a period of time to get the big issues sorted out.”<\/p>\n
Mr Ratcliffe bought a minority share in Manchester United in late 2023 and his Ineos group has since taken control of football operations.<\/p>\n
The billionaire has presided over a variety of contentious changes since becoming part of the ownership, with ticket pricing and availability causing particular anger among United fans.<\/p>\n
A protest against the club\u2019s owners \u2013 including for the first time towards Sir Jim as well as the Glazers \u2013 took place before Manchester United\u2019s recent home game against Fulham.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Manchester United co-owner Jim Ratcliffe should apologise for his “offensive and wrong” comments that the UK has been…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":293625,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-293624","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=293624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293624\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/293625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}