Manchester United co-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe believes the United Kingdom has been “colonised by immigrants”.

Ratcliffe, who moved to Monaco in 2020, said the UK needs a prime minister who is “prepared to be unpopular … to get the big issues sorted”, comparing that role to his own at United, where he has been “very unpopular” because of the changes made since his arrival in 2024.

“You can’t have an economy with nine million people on benefits and huge levels of immigrants coming in,” Ratcliffe, 73, told Sky. “I mean, the UK has been colonised. It’s costing too much money.

“The UK has been colonised by immigrants, really, hasn’t it? I mean, the population of the UK was 58 million in 2020, now it’s 70 million. That’s 12 million people.”

The UK’s Office for National Statistics estimated that the UK population was 69.5 million in November 2025, compared to 67.1 million in 2020. The ONS also estimated that the UK’s long-term net migration was 204,000 from 2024 to 2025.

According to a House of Commons research briefing from January of this year there were 1.68 million people, as of December 2025, claiming unemployment-related benefits in the UK.

Ratcliffe also told Sky that he had recently met with Nigel Farage, the Reform UK party leader.

“I think Nigel is an intelligent man, and, I think he’s got good intentions. But in a way, you could say exactly the same about (Labour leader) Keir Starmer. I think it needs somebody who’s prepared to be unpopular for a period of time to get the big issues sorted out.

“I’ve seen quite a bit of this at the football club. If you do difficult things, which we felt that we had to do at Manchester United … we felt like they were the right things to do. But you do become very unpopular for a while.”

Manchester United have been approached for comment.

Ratcliffe’s petrochemicals company INEOS officially took a minority stake in United in February 2024. They have since overseen a raft of changes, including appointing new executives, including CEO Omar Berrada and director of football Jason Wilcox.

Across several stages, United have made 450 redundancies since Ratcliffe’s INEOS arrived, representing a significant cut to the workforce. United had an average of 1,112 monthly employees according to club accounts for the year ending June 30, 2023. After one tranche of redundancies, Ratcliffe said the club would have “gone bust by Christmas” if not for that and other cost-cutting measures.

United have had five men’s head coaches since INEOS took control of football operations, Erik ten Hag, Ruud van Nistelrooy, Ruben Amorim and Michael Carrick.

There have also been recent protests against INEOS and Ratcliffe by United fans, following a rise in ticket prices at the start of this season.

“I’ve been very unpopular at Manchester United because we’ve made lots of changes,” Ratcliffe added. “But for the better, in my view. And I think we’re beginning to see some evidence in the football club that that’s beginning to pay off.”

In a statement, Manchester United Muslim Supporters Club said it was “deeply concerned” by Ratcliffe’s comments, which “ecohed language frequently used in far-right narratives that frame migrants as invaders and demographic threats”.

It added: “Such rhetoric has real-world consequences…legitimising prejudice and deepening division.”

🚨 MUMSC statement regarding recent comments by Sir Jim Ratcliffe.

Read below. pic.twitter.com/mIgxPdKzWB

— MUMSC (@mum_sc) February 11, 2026

Ratcliffe also faced criticism from Labour MP Stella Creasy, who posted on X that he “doesn’t seem to understand the contribution they (immigrants) make to his own team, let alone this country” and pointed out that he is “an immigrant himself”.