Jim Ratcliffe takes state subsidies, shifts risk onto the public, and blames migrants and benefit claimants—while parts of corporate Britain rehearse the rhetoric of a harsher political settlement. Sir Jim Ratcliffe says Britain is being “colonised” by immigrants. The claim collapses under the weight of his own balance sheet.
I will be blunt: I can’t stand him. Not just because most football fans hate Man Utd. Not as a personality, which is irrelevant, but as a type. The offshore billionaire who lectures the public about sacrifice. The subsidy recipient who rails against dependency. The industrialist who treats society as a cost centre and then wonders why it resists. He is the chairman and 60% majority shareholder of INEOS – a multinational petrochemical company.
He voted Labour at the last election, was a big party donor and on good terms with the Labour leadership. Starmer received over £1700 worth of hospitality at a Manchester United match where he was the guest of its chairman, Sir Jim Ratcliffe. The Labour government and Manchester council were in preliminary talks about the plans for a new 100,000 seater stadium at Old Trafford. Ratcliffe was after some state and council support.
Post McSweeney and anxious to appease the soft left in the party Starmer ditched his ‘island of strangers’ rhetoric on migrants and robustly attacked Ratcliffe’s comments. He demanded Radcliffe apologise. Lisa Nandy, the Culure and Sports secretary, obviously had not read her WhatsApp. Her response was to say Ratcliffe had a point about all these people not working and that migration was an issue the Tories had made worse.
State handouts to INEOS
The Grangemouth deal tells the story. INEOS announces a £150 million “investment.” The state provides a £50 million grant and underwrites the rest with a £75 million loan guarantee. If things go wrong, the public carries the downside. If they go right, the returns sit on a private balance sheet. That is not partnership. That is risk transfer.
This sits on top of years of public support. Up to £70 million in state aid. Energy tax relief. Policy concessions. The same state Ratcliffe now lectures about “dependency” has been bankrolling the conditions that keep his firms viable while his credit rating slides and debt mounts.
None of this is unusual for heavy industry. Governments intervene to protect strategic capacity. Jobs matter. Supply chains matter. But the hypocrisy matters too. Welfare for capital is treated as necessity. Welfare for workers as moral failure.
Ratcliffe moved his tax residency to Monaco, backed Brexit, rails against carbon taxes, and now reaches for the language of “colonisation” to explain Britain’s economic malaise. Not deindustrialisation. Not stagnant wages. Not the boardrooms that paid out dividends while plants rusted. Migrants and benefit claimants.
It is an old move. When the economic model falters, blame is pushed downward. The nurse on universal credit becomes the problem. The migrant warehouse worker becomes the threat. Meanwhile billions sit offshore, firms lobby for subsidy, and executives demand others show “courage” by cutting jobs and benefits.
At Manchester United he has made staff redundant while millions continue to flow out in player salaries and executive churn, gutting the back-office in the name of discipline. He has even cut the free lunch for staff. That is the Ratcliffe method. Cut labour. Protect prestige. Call it realism.
Shifting to Farage?
He praises Nigel Farage as intelligent, offers gentle disappointment in Keir Starmer, and suggests Britain needs a period of unpopularity to get “back on track.” Unpopular for whom? He does not say. Not for those who can relocate their wealth at will. The pain is always scheduled elsewhere.
There is a wider pattern here. Ratcliffe’s comments do not sit in isolation; they read like positioning.
Parts of the business establishment can read a poll. They can see the drift toward Reform-style politics: anti-immigration rhetoric, hostility to welfare, deregulation dressed up as “common sense,” a promise to be ruthless where mainstream parties hesitate. The smart money does not wait for that shift. It rehearses the language early. It normalises it. It proves its toughness in advance.
That is what this starts to look like. Immigration described as “colonisation.” Benefit claimants recast as economic ballast. Carbon taxes treated as sabotage. The implication is that Britain’s problems are behavioural, not structural. Too many migrants. Too many dependants. Too many constraints on business.
It is a familiar alignment. Corporate Britain wants subsidy, energy support, infrastructure, loan guarantees and industrial protection. But it also wants a political climate that keeps labour weak, welfare stingy and regulation light. Reform-style rhetoric offers exactly that: anger directed downward, risk cushioned upward.
None of this makes a Reform government inevitable. But sections of capital are hedging. They are learning to speak the idiom. The language of grievance travels well in boardrooms because it diverts scrutiny. If the crisis is caused by migrants and benefits, no one asks about dividends, debt structures, tax residency or decades of underinvestment.
That is why the tone matters. When a billionaire reaches for the vocabulary of “colonisation,” it is not just an outburst. It is a signal. A way of saying the terms of the next political settlement are already being negotiated.
Britain is not being colonised by immigrants. It is being hollowed out by an economic order that socialises losses and privatises gains. Ratcliffe has prospered from that order. Now he wants to posture as its critic, while demanding everyone else pay for the consequences.
Stop Press, 13.30, 12 February
Since this article was written, Ratcliffe has issued what he calls an apology. He apologise to people who felt offended and apologised for his choice of language but did not fundamentally row back on the substance of the position he put forward.
Sunder Katwala, who runs British Future, a thinktank dealing with immigration, race and identity issues, has posted on Bluesky about what he thinks Ratcliffe should have said.
Jim Ratcliffe has issued a bland and generic statement about economic policy which does not engage at all with what he got wrong, or why saying the UK has been colonised has been legitimately criticised. Nor does he seem to retract his language of colonisation in gesturing towards a semi-apology
TRY: “I regret saying that UK has been colonised by immigration, I understand that was the wrong language to use. I can see how that has detracted from what I see as the substantive issue: jobs, growth, welfare and well-managed migration for the benefit of all, which I hope to engage with better” (from Guardian, politics live 12 February)
The Football Association is investigating whether he has bought the game into disrepute. Several Man U supporters groups have also condemned his remarks
Anticapitalist Musings