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2 hours ago
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Well I, for one, am shocked. Shocked to learn that a tax-exiled English expat who made his billions squeezing chemical plants doesn’t have liberal, let alone accurate, views on immigration. Or at least, in public anyway.
It seems highly likely Sir Jim Ratcliffe knew what he was doing in the course of his now semi-recanted Sky News interview. And it is above all vital that at least one part of his empire of influence – football, sport, Manchester United – rejects it, as the club have done to some extent in their statement.
When Ratcliffe bought his stake in United he made some initial attempts at presenting himself as a kind of billionaire of the people, our own clog-clapping son of the cobbles, Eccles cakes tumbling from his turn-ups, essentially on a mission of benevolent regeneration.
In reality Ratcliffe was always here to sack the tea lady. Ineos has a highly successful set of methods. Strip it back. Cut the fat. Access funding. But then, becoming a billionaire is not an act of benevolent collectivism. It requires supreme self-serving narrow focus.
This is simply the landscape. No doubt we can look forward to the owners of other Premier League football clubs, for example the autocratic ruling families of Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi, disagreeing in the strongest terms with Big Sir Jim’s views, standing up for the little guy, calling for more gruel for everyone.
So yes, there is this point of view. You could very easily be cynical, jaded, lost in realpolitik at the revelation that Ratcliffe feels it useful to pretend Britain is in economic difficulty because of an invading army of foreigners. And that Nigel Farage, arch deregulator, seems, in his disinterested view, an entirely reasonable voice on this topic.
Let us be clear about what is happening here. There is very little chance Ratcliffe feels any of this deeply. But he does know that a slash-and-burn Reform government would be good for business. With his Ineos hat on Ratcliffe has spoken publicly about the problems of doing business in the current version of a non-EU UK. He wants a harder out.
Immigration is just a wedge issue in this dynamic, a way of pressing those buttons. If Ratcliffe actually gives a personal toss about this, is actually losing any sleep about its effects on “everyday people”, I will gladly eat my own arm. This is pre-electioneering on behalf of the super-wealthy. A powerful person with skin in the game is trying to influence people into voting a certain way.
And, yes, there is a so-what angle here. You can say whatever you like, particularly if you’re rich and powerful. Free speech is a thing, even factually incorrect free speech. But it does matter what Ratcliffe says, and for two very obvious reasons.
First, the position he holds comes with responsibilities. Football is giving him this platform. Football in its current form is the greatest global megaphone ever devised. His views on this topic are being broadcast for one reason: because people like or wish to consume Manchester United.
With this in mind the first responsibility is to get his facts right. Ratcliffe stated, incorrectly, that the UK population had increased by 12 million since 2020 which, if it were true, would be a genuine case of infrastructure breakdown. He also used the word “colonised” to describe the effects of immigration, a highly loaded and inflammatory word, deliberately chosen.
And yeah he’s right in one way. Britain has been colonised by foreigners since the Beaker people. The Normans. The anglicised Saxons who gave Ratcliffe his name. But the language is grimly familiar. Colonisers don’t just arrive. They invade, take control, seize power. And what do you do with colonisers? You eject them, you rebel, you take up arms. Ratcliffe is not simply saying we have a problem with numbers or integration. His vocabulary is insisting on division and separation, the evil outside versus the good and the native.
Does he really not know what “colonised” implies? Does a multibillionaire really not understand figures to the extent he can parrot something so obviously incorrect? Does he realise this kind of rhetoric prevents serious debate, takes away the ability of politicians to say, yes, maybe there is a problem, one that can be too quickly dismissed by those on the left who don’t perhaps appreciate the real-life pressures, or fear they too will be caught up in the rhetoric of racists and opportunists.
Instead we have this, the language of the internet, misinformation and vitriol further normalised by our highest-profile football-coded billionaire. There is a playbook to be followed here. Ratcliffe has now semi-apologised, which means he can say he has actually apologised. But the substance of what he says will remain, echoing through the ecosystem, toxifying the soil.
Farage has already noted the name check, another tick for the way power flows in this country. And again, this matters, because football gave Ratcliffe this platform. The Premier League’s tireless marketing arm is empowering it.
Manchester United are being misused. For all the corporate gloss, United’s real power lies in their congealed but enduring status as a community object, a big tent, a place for all-comers. Their co-owner has no business using this carefully stitched thing to spread his political counter-messages.
The city of Manchester is also being misrepresented. The line Ratcliffe is parroting is at odds with the city’s spirit, its football clubs, its sporting culture. Manchester is a port city built on generations of incomers. It’s a mixed-up muddled-up multipack of people bumping up against each other. Its energy is open, mix-and-match, outward-looking.
To his credit Andy Burnham, who has cosied up in the past to the regeneration aspects of the Ratcliffe regime, has been quick to reject this targeted line. Burnham understands his city. He also understands what this is, the politics of endorsement and opportunity.
And of course football itself is being weaponised. There is a moral issue, an issue of ownership, of sport once again co-opted by power. Very few things remain that have at their sclerotic and compromised heart an idea of community, openness, collectivism. More prosaically the Premier league, defined in its statutes as anti-prejudice and anti-division, is being piggybacked for a party political broadcast (with a bit of Keir Starmer thrown in, like an Ofcom-friendly disclaimer).
We can still revolt against this pulling of the levers, see it for the spume of vomit it really is. We see you, corporate interests, the politics of fear. And no thank you, not here, not on our pitch. But the second point about Ratcliffe is, as ever, something more diffuse, a kind of sadness.
It always feels like Manchester United are trying to tell you something. Why are people so obsessed with this club? Because it is basically Britain, a grand, sodden dying empire, decorously putrid, still just about operational for all the leaks and creaks and wet rot. How do we rewire and refurbish this thing? How do we generate energy, but also shed the drag of the past?
Against this backdrop getting to know Sir Jim has been a deeply depressing project. First because he is a terrible club owner, so naive he seems to have genuinely believed he should have a say in the style of football. So vague on details he employed the world’s most rigidly deluded systems manager and gave him a squad of off-cuts and leftovers.
There has also been a sense of wider doom watching him in action. Here we have someone who was at one point Britain’s richest man. This is what we’ve got. An icon of industry. Our own domestic titan. This is England, the safest hands we have, our own billionaire-dad, our finance Gandalf. And he appears to be completely clueless. Or at least deliberately, carelessly cynical in the way he presents himself.
This is the creeping fear. Maybe there really are no grown-ups left on this mist-sodden island. Maybe dad really is an idiot. Either way, here we go again retailing bullshit, putting our hopes in a 73-year-old who can’t add up properly, out there using football as his radio, telling us the family next door are here to take our public services, so you’d better get out and vote for the guy most likely to empower my business.
At some point everything in this picture can be rejected. Manchester United supporters may be stuck with Ratcliffe. But football, sport and everything in its arc can reject the things he is asking us to do, refuse to be spooked, refuse to fall into the arms of the opportunist he is promoting. Who knows, maybe one day this kind of messaging, its cynicism, its contempt for the public, may just flick a switch and drive us a little closer.
