{"id":757870,"date":"2026-02-11T19:50:12","date_gmt":"2026-02-11T19:50:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/757870\/"},"modified":"2026-02-11T19:50:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-11T19:50:12","slug":"manchester-united-owner-praises-farage-during-anti-migration-diatribe-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/757870\/","title":{"rendered":"Manchester United owner praises Farage during anti-migration diatribe \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ratcliffe, who made most of his <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/billionaires\/profiles\/james-a-ratcliffe\/?embedded-checkout=true\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">estimated \u20ac17 billion fortune<\/a> in the chemicals industry with his company INEOS, told Sky he had recently met Farage, but stopped short of endorsing him to become prime minister over incumbent Keir Starmer.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think Nigel is an intelligent man and I think he\u2019s got good intentions,\u201d said Ratcliffe. \u201cBut in a way, you could say exactly the same about Keir, when Keir came in. I think it needs somebody who\u2019s prepared to be unpopular for a period of time to get the big issues sorted out.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Earlier in the interview, Ratcliffe asserted that Britain is being \u201ccolonized by immigrants,\u201d citing numbers that are not accurate.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou can\u2019t have an economy with nine million people on benefits and huge levels of immigrants coming in,\u201d he said. \u201cI mean, the U.K. has been colonized. It\u2019s costing too much money.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe U.K. has been colonized by immigrants, really, hasn\u2019t it? I mean, the population of the UK was 58 million in 2020, now it\u2019s 70 million. That\u2019s 12 million people.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>While there has been a large increase in net migration since Britain left the EU, the numbers are not as notable as 12 million in four years. As pointed out by Sky in its article, the population of the U.K. was, in fact, 67 million in 2020. It hasn\u2019t been as low as 58 million since the year 2000.<\/p>\n<p>Manchester United is one of the most-supported clubs in the U.K., but has failed to win a Premier League title since the departure of legendary manager Alex Ferguson in 2013.<\/p>\n<p>Ratcliffe said he has been \u201cvery unpopular\u201d at the club because of changes he has made, but that in his view the tweaks have been for the better. Those changes include severe cost-cutting, making hundreds of staff redundant and removing Ferguson from a lucrative ambassadorial role.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ratcliffe, who made most of his estimated \u20ac17 billion fortune in the chemicals industry with his company INEOS,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":757871,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[8813],"tags":[18598,802,748,1193,393,4884,40,807,2465,6657,37029,384,1200,16,15],"class_list":["post-757870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manchester","tag-alex-ferguson","tag-brexit","tag-britain","tag-british-politics","tag-england","tag-great-britain","tag-immigration","tag-keir-starmer","tag-manchester","tag-migration","tag-monaco","tag-nigel-farage","tag-tax","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116053739116926826","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/757870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=757870"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/757870\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/757871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=757870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=757870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=757870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}