What exactly did Ratcliffe say about immigration?published at 11:23 GMT
Watch a clip from Ratcliffe’s interview
Ratcliffe was speaking on the sidelines of the European Industry Summit in Belgium, in an interview with Sky News’s economic editor Ed Conway, on Wednesday.
During the conversation, Ratcliffe said: “You can’t have an economy with nine million people on benefits and huge levels of immigrants coming in. I mean, the UK has been colonised. It’s costing too much money.”
“The UK has been colonised by immigrants, really, hasn’t it?” he added.
Citing incorrect figures, he went on to say: “The population of the UK was 58 million in 2020, now it’s 70 million. That’s 12 million people.”
According to the Office for National Statistics, the estimate for the UK’s population in mid-2025 was 69.4 million, external, compared with 66.7 million in mid-2020.
The 73-year-old likened the job of running the country to his stewardship of Manchester United, saying politicians needed to be “prepared to be unpopular for a period of time to get the big issues sorted out”.
“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’re going to have to do some things which are unpopular, and show some courage,” he said.
Ratcliffe has restructured United since acquiring a 27.7% stake in 2024, making 450 redundancies, overhauling senior management and sacking two managers.
