The billionaire Jim Ratcliffe, who moved to tax-free Monaco in 2020, has claimed that the UK is being “colonised” by immigrants. Speaking in an interview with Sky News, Britain’s seventh-richest man and the part-owner of Manchester United took aim at people receiving state support and immigrants. “You can’t afford ... you can’t have an economy with 9 million people on benefits and huge levels of immigrants coming in,” he said. “I mean, the population of the UK was 58 million in 2020, now it’s 70 million. The ONS estimated that the population of the UK was 67 million in 2020 and was last anywhere close to 58 million in 2000.

Source: The Irish Times February 12, 2026 14:35 UTC