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There are a lot of billionaires making global headlines at the moment and even if we were dying of thirst, Football Daily wouldn’t go for a pint with any of them. Big Sir Jim Ratcliffe almost certainly wouldn’t want to come for a pint with us, given our backstreet local’s clientele boasts no end of foreigners of every stripe and shade, all of whom are apparently more hell-bent on annexing the pool table than “colonising the UK”. A man who is so patriotic he would do anything for his country except live or pay taxes in it, Big Sir Jim has plumbed unprecedented depths of unpopularity among Manchester United fans by embarking on a diatribe against immigrants that played fast and loose in its use of far-right rhetoric and was backed up by wildly inaccurate statistics.
While the usual suspects – your Nigels, your Tommys, your Julias, your anonymous Social Media Disgrace boot-lickers – have of course applauded the United co-owner’s ‘straight-talking’ it has not gone down so well in more enlightened circles. The UK prime minister, the Greater Manchester mayor and assorted United fan groups have been among many, many folk to condemn his deranged comments about ‘forrins’ relying on handouts, labelling them crass, offensive and unhelpful. Never one to turn down a government handout himself – specifically when it comes to funding Ineos or a Wembley of the North stadium project – Big Sir Jim has also been accused of outright hypocrisy given his own immigrant status as a tax-dodging resident of a Mediterranean principality. “Offensive and wrong,” barked Keir Starmer. “Britain is a proud, tolerant and diverse country. Jim Ratcliffe should apologise.”
