What made the Manchester United co-owner’s anti-immigrant screed so revolting was his brazen willingness to say it all out loud. Remind you of anyone?
id British petrochemicals billionaire and Manchester United’s controlling minority owner, Sir Jim Ratcliffe, really mean it when he proclaimed to Sky News that “the UK is being colonized by immigrants”?
Is Ratcliffe simply a gutter racist or actually making a cynical political play that may redound to his benefit down the line when Britain faces down yet another period of political upheaval as the country’s old factions continue to fracture? There’s reasonable debate to be had there.
There’s also a good point about whether even engaging with this sordid rhetoric puts an unfair onus on immigrants by forcing them to tout their contributions and accomplishments – and it, too, has been made. You may even ask the question of whether prefixing someone with a royally conferred honorific in recognition of all their good work in superheating the planet makes them feel untouchable.
As far as soccer is concerned, however, the outcome of any of these discussions sort of doesn’t matter. Neither does Ratcliffe’s half-hearted walk-back of his comments in that actually-not-really-walking-it-back kind of way, doing the semantic I’m-sorry-if-you-were-offended non-apology. Nor does the swift backlash, or Manchester United distancing themselves from the words of the man ostensibly running the club.
