Jim Ratcliffe should learn about his own club before spouting his nonsense on immigrants

Manchester United co-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe has been told to study the club he controls before making public pronouncements on immigration, after remarks described by Chancellor Rachel Reeves as “disgusting” drew sharp criticism from supporters and observers alike.

The billionaire, whose Ineos group acquired a 27.7% stake in United last winter, has come under fire for comments that echo wider political rhetoric but sit uneasily with both the club’s self-proclaimed inclusive ethos and the make-up of the modern game. Fans have responded with banners proclaiming “love immigrants, hate billionaires” and social-media memes celebrating the club’s foreign heroes, from Eric Cantona to Andre Onana.

The backlash invites comparison with a scene from Jimmy McGovern’s 1990s drama Cracker, set in Manchester, in which a police raid on a white-nationalist hangout uncovers a 1993-94 United squad photo. Detective David Bilborough reels off the names of black and foreign players—“Ince is black, Parker is black, Dublin is black, Schmeichel’s a Dane, Kanchelskis is a bloody Ukrainian and Cantona is French”—to expose the absurdity of racist allegiance to a multicultural team. While no one equates Ratcliffe’s intervention with that fictional extremism, the episode underlines a truth the petrochemicals magnate appears to have missed: football’s power to dissolve, rather than reinforce, social barriers.

United themselves felt compelled to restate their commitment to diversity, yet remain partnered with an owner whose stance contradicts that mission. The irony is heightened by history: Irish-born Billy Whelan, who died in the 1958 Munich air disaster, was an immigrant; across Manchester, Bert Trautmann became a City legend little more than a decade after World War II. Today roughly 70% of Premier League footballers and 79% of managers are migrants, a demographic reality Ratcliffe’s critique implicitly brushes aside.

Academics have quantified football’s integrative impact. A 2019 Stanford study found that Mohamed Salah’s exploits at Liverpool coincided with a measurable drop in Islamophobic hate crime on Merseyside. Similar fieldwork documents fans who voice hostility to immigration in abstract terms yet lionise foreign stars on match day, a cognitive dissonance the sport quietly erodes over time.

The controversy also exposes tensions inherent in contemporary club ownership. United’s statement distanced the club from Ratcliffe’s views, just as previous regimes have had to qualify the Glazers’ profit-driven agenda or the geopolitical entanglements of Abu Dhabi and Saudi ownership at City and Newcastle. Advocates argue such episodes strengthen the case for supporter-controlled models, arguing that social institutions should represent the communities that sustain them rather than private or state interests seeking soft power or brand burnishment.

For Ratcliffe, the episode carries reputational risk. Industry insiders speak of “billionaire-idiot syndrome”, the belief that success in one sphere translates effortlessly to another. When he attempted to buy Chelsea in 2022, negotiators sensed he underestimated football’s complexity; his recent foray into political commentary suggests the lesson has not been learned. Had identical remarks come from the chairman of an obscure chemicals conglomerate, they would scarcely have registered. Coming from the co-owner of the world’s most visible sporting brand, they invited global scrutiny and forced a partial apology.

The wider game, meanwhile, continues to market itself as the planet’s most inclusive pastime. Stadiums still witness racism and exclusion, yet week-to-week experience chips away at prejudice more effectively than many policy initiatives. Ratcliffe, advisers suggest, could begin repairing the damage by recognising that heritage and by acknowledging that the club he part-owns has long been sustained by the very demographic he publicly questions.

In short, before opining on immigration, Britain’s richest football boss might do well to watch that old episode of Cracker—and then take a long look at his own squad list.