A leading UK businessman has waded in to the debate about immigration. Jim Radcliffe, who. made his money in chemicals, said, in an interview on Sky.
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? I mean, the population of the UK was 58 million in 2020, now it’s 70 million. That’s 12 million people. [1]
A chorus of condemnation from the left. [2] Apparently the Prime Minister has called on Sir Radcliffe to “apologize”, as have other political figures. One leading candidate for leader of the ‘Labour’ party issued a lengthy statement including this: “It is inaccurate, insulting, inflammatory and should be withdrawn.“. And, so on.
It does seem that Sir Radcliffe got his figures wrong. The growth from 58 million to 70 million has taken place over a much longer time period. Though, he is right in substance; the figure for total net immigration since 2000 seems to be close to 7 million. (And, of course, some of these people will have had children). [3] Naturally, liberals focus on the error in detail.
Firstly; these words will resonate with millions. The chorus of calls to “apologize” will only fuel the sense amongst these people that the mainstream political class is ‘gaslighting’ them about immigration. A godsend for the Reform party.
Secondly; these words speak to a reality which many people feel. Let me give three anecdotes to illustrate this. Two were conversations I have had with taxi drivers. One complained to me about how his business was under pressure from a group of Somali taxi drivers. He said they live, many people in one house, and so keep their costs down, and so out compete him. The other bemoaned how the street he grew up in, had been ‘taken over’ by people of Asian heritage and his parents in the end had felt alienated in their own community and, if I remember correctly, had moved out. He wasn’t bitter, more sad. Both, at the time, sounded racist to me. Another was a conversation with someone at a sports club. He complained to us that his children’s school has been ‘taken over’ by people with an Asian heritage and that the main language in the playground was no longer English. This sounded racist to me at the time, too. But, the fact is, this is the experience of millions of white British working class people. The words of Radcliffe describe these people’s experience. The political elite, who lecture us about ‘racism’ and demand apologies, live in a different world. Their jobs are not under pressure from immigration; very few immigrants filter through to the higher professional levels, and they pose no threat to these people’s incomes, and very few move into the up-market living areas. Their children go to private schools where they may meet the children of rich international elites, all already tuned into international elite liberal ideas, or to ‘good’ state schools, which are probably, statistically, more likely to be in ‘white’ areas. There are, I would be pretty sure, not that many wealthy commuter villages in Hertfordshire or Surrey where 80% of the houses have been bought by people from different cultures, speaking different languages, dressing differently, worshipping differently, filling out the schools with foreign languages. If this happened, my guess is that Starmer and Burnham and Ed Davey, (the liberal leader), would all immediately, and even more so than the working class, start demanding an end to unfettered immigration.
Thirdly, it is a sign of the times that the liberal political-media elites cannot engage in debate. The factual error aside, the comment is a valid interpretation of the effect of immigration. Why not debate it? But, instead, we have these calls to “apologize”. The BBC main evening news last night had a piece on this which, from what I could tell from the trailer, treated these comments as something shocking and beyond the pale.
Why won’t the political-media elites debate this? Because mass immigration is a key part of the neo-liberal economic model to which they are all absolutely attached, not just because it is a huge gravy train for them, but because, in many cases they genuinely simply cannot imagine society in any other way. All of this will feed Reform though.
Notes
- https://news.sky.com/story/the-uk-has-been-colonised-by-immigrants-says-ineos-boss-and-man-utd-co-owner-sir-jim-ratcliffe-13506333
- https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2026/feb/12/uk-politics-latest-news-updates-labour-jim-ratcliffe-keir-starmer
- This was based on comparing several internet sources to get a general idea.