LONDON, Feb 12 \u2013 British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has labelled comments about immigration made by billionaire Manchester United co-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe as \u201coffensive and wrong\u201d.<\/p>\n
Sir Jim, founder of one of the world\u2019s largest chemical companies, Ineos, told Sky News on Wednesday that the UK had been \u201ccolonised by immigrants\u201d and suggested the prime minister was \u201ctoo nice\u201d to do \u201cdifficult things\u201d to stabilise the country\u2019s economy.<\/p>\n
In his rebuke on Wednesday evening, Sir Keir added that Britain was \u201ca proud, tolerant and diverse country\u201d and called on Sir Jim to apologise.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for No 10 also called on the businessman to apologise, saying the comments \u201cplay into the hands of those who want to divide our country\u201d.<\/p>\n
The 73-year-old said politicians needed to be \u201cprepared to be unpopular for a period of time to get the big issues sorted out\u201d.<\/p>\n
Sir Jim has restructured United since acquiring a 27.7% stake in 2024, making 450 redundancies, overhauling senior management and sacking two managers.<\/p>\n
He said that although some of his decisions had been unpopular, he had had to make them \u201cto get the big issues sorted out\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you do difficult things, which we felt that we had to do at Manchester United\u2026 we felt like they were the right things to do. But you do become very unpopular for a while,\u201d said Sir Jim.<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cBut you\u2019ve got all the same issues with the country. 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\u2019re going to have to do some things which are unpopular, and show some courage.\u201d<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
LONDON, Feb 12 \u2013 British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has labelled comments about immigration made by billionaire Manchester United co-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe as \u201coffensive and wrong\u201d. Sir Jim, founder of one of the world\u2019s largest chemical companies, Ineos, told Sky News on Wednesday that the UK had been \u201ccolonised by immigrants\u201d and suggested […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-130749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130749\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}