Nigel Farage has thrown his support behind Sir Jim Ratcliffe after the Manchester United co-owner faced backlash for claiming the UK had been ‘colonised by immigrants’. In a video posted to his YouTube channel, the Reform UK leader insisted that Ratcliffe was ‘right’, despite the controversial choice of words.
Ratcliffe, a Failsworth-born billionaire, sparked anger during a Sky News interview on Wednesday (February 13) when he said the UK’s population had grown by 12 million since 2020 and that the country had been ‘colonised by immigrants’. His comments were criticised by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham, who called them ‘inaccurate, insulting and inflammatory’. The Manchester United Supporters’ Trust and the club’s Muslim Supporters Club also condemned the remarks, prompting the club to issue a statement affirming its inclusive nature. Ratcliffe later apologised, saying he was ‘sorry that my choice of language has offended some people’.
In his video, Farage acknowledged that ‘colonised’ was a controversial word but reiterated claims about population growth and the number of people on benefits. He argued that public services had diminished and rents had risen due to a ‘population explosion’. He also pointed to parts of London where road signs and Underground signs are in foreign languages, and claimed that one million people in the UK do not speak English at all, with four million barely speaking it. However, according to the 2021 Census, 4.1 million people were ‘proficient’ in English but did not speak it as their main language, while 880,000 could not speak English well and only 161,000 could not speak it at all.
Fact-checking has since challenged Ratcliffe’s figures. The UK population stood at 69.5 million in mid-2025, up from 66.7 million in 2020, not the 12 million increase he claimed. Net migration was 204,000 in the year to June 2025, a 69 per cent decrease from the previous year. The number of Universal Credit claimants was 8.4 million in December 2025, including 2.2 million in work. Ratcliffe has been a Monaco resident since 2020.
