❓WHAT HAPPENED: Reform Party leader Nigel Farage has backed comments by Manchester United owner and industrial tycoon Sir Jim Ratcliffe about immigration and its impact on Britain.
👤WHO WAS INVOLVED: Nigel Farage and Jim Ratcliffe.
📍WHEN & WHERE: Farage made his comments in a video statement published online on Thursday.
💬KEY QUOTE: “[L]ook at parts of London, for example, where the road names and underground signs aren’t just in English—they’re in a foreign language as well. One million people living in this country don’t speak any English at all. Four million people living in this country barely speak passable English. And that’s the point he was making: that big areas of our towns and cities have been changed into something completely different to what they were, and that it’s all making us poorer.” – Nigel Farage
🎯IMPACT: Ratcliffe’s comments and Farage’s endorsement of them showcase the growing importance of mass migration and its consequences in Britain’s political discourse.
Reform Party leader Nigel Farage has endorsed British billionaire Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s recent remarks on mass migration, insisting the INEOS founder and Manchester United co-owner is correct in highlighting the pressures on the country’s resources and identity. Sir Jim stated in a recent interview that Britain “has been colonized by immigrants,” arguing that the nation cannot sustain “an economy with nine million people on benefits and huge levels of immigrants coming in.”
In a video statement released on Thursday morning, Farage backed the Tycoon, saying, “What he said [is] that our population has gone up from 58 million to 70 million and that with nine million people of working age on benefits, we don’t need mass migration. He said much of the country had been colonized by immigrants.”
Addressing backlash from Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and other liberals over the use of the word “colonized,” Farage said, “Now, that word was a controversial word, and he said, ‘OK, if you don’t like the word, we’ll tone it down.’ But just think about this: You ask yourself why public services have diminished. You ask yourself why rents have gone through the roof. The population explosion has done that.”
Farage pointed to the many visible changes in Britain’s urban areas, noting “parts of London, for example, where the road names, the Underground signs aren’t just in English, they’re in a foreign language as well. One million people living in this country don’t speak any English at all. Four million people living in this country barely speak passable English.”
He argued these shifts have fundamentally altered communities, “that big areas of our towns and cities have been changed into something completely different to what they were. And that it’s all making us poorer.”
Farage rejected the criticism of Sir Jim from the Prime Minister and corporate media outlets, declaring: “I don’t really care if Number 10 is in uproar or if much of mainstream media find his comments too difficult. I believe firmly that Jim Ratcliffe is right.”
YouGov tracking shows 69 percent of Britons believe immigration levels over the last ten years have been too high, with a mere four percent saying they have been too low and just 17 percent viewing them as about right, indicating broad public alignment with concerns raised by Ratcliffe and Farage.
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