Even rotter Ratcliffe wants to distance himself from Reform

Ratcliffe, one of the country’s richest men with an estimated net worth of £15.194 billion – albeit now resident in tax haven Monaco – told Sky News in February that the UK had been “colonised” by immigrants who were draining resources from the state, comments which earned him a rebuke from then-PM Keir Starmer.

The founder of the INEOS chemicals group told the broadcaster: “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.

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“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.”

Those figures were nonsense (the Office for National Statistics estimates that the population of the UK was 67 million in mid-2020), but it did not stop Reform from using them in its new video. Alas, Ratcliffe was less keen to be involved.

Ineos sources have said that Ratcliffe had no knowledge of the video before it was published and that he did not give permission for his words to be used in it. Sources told the Daily Telegraph it had been made clear to Reform that he was not happy with it.

Reform say that, since the clip of Ratcliffe was taken from an interview that was publicly broadcast, they did not need permission from him to use the footage. Reform have also confirmed they have not received any complaints. Possibly all true – but almost certainly putting the kibosh on any of Ratcliffe’s readies coming Reform’s way.

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When the businessman made his comments earlier this year, Starmer called on him to apologise, saying Britain was “a proud, tolerant and diverse country”. Ratcliffe eventually responded by saying that he was sorry if his “choice of language has offended some people in the UK and Europe”.

If that sounded like it had been scripted by a PR professional, then Ratcliffe’s true views were shown when he returned to the subject in an interview with the BBC last week, saying he felt the UK was “on the slide” and “no one is dealing with the immigration problem and no one is tough enough to deal with the benefits problem”.

“Someone needs to address this, otherwise the country ends up in a bad place and goes broke,” he added.

It’s odd, then, that he was so keen to distance himself from Farage’s mob – unless, of course, Restore is more to his taste.