Sir Jim Ratcliffe: pointing fingers at migrants whilst picking Britain’s pockets

Sir Jim Ratcliffe is one of those billionaires we talked about recently who always appears near the top of the Times Rich List but is consistently absent from the Times Tax List. Ratcliffe spent last week blaming migrants and people accessing social security for Britain’s problems. But the truth is the UK is struggling because billionaires like him have spent years extracting wealth from this country, while giving back as little as possible, and politicians have helped them point the finger at everyone else.

What did Ratcliffe get wrong?

Ratcliffe’s comments were wrong on every level. Firstly, his numbers were way off. He claimed the population had grown by 12 million in five years, the real figure is closer to 3 million, and only half of that is due to immigration. His talk of migrants “colonising” Britain is frankly ludicrous, and ironic given that many of us from immigrant families, including me, are here because of Britain’s colonisation and wars abroad. And when we think about the migrants we actually know— colleagues, neighbours, friends, family members— we see people enriching our communities, not threatening them. It’s only the imaginary hordes conjured by billionaires like Jim that seem frightening.

His “9 million on benefits” line is equally misleading. Yes, 8.6 million people currently receive Universal Credit, but 2.2 million of those are in work. That means we’re ultimately subsidising companies whose wages are too low to live on (perhaps like those Ratcliffe was caught failing to pay the legal minimum wage). Another 2 million are actively looking or preparing for work. The rest are studying, caring, retired or too sick to work. When we think about those we actually know who rely on the safety net, we understand why it exists, why any of us might need it at some point in our lives. And that far from not being able to afford it, we can’t afford to lose it.

The truth is Ratcliffe, and other billionaires fanning the flames of migrant hatred, are trying to distract us. But distract us from what?

Let’s look at Ratcliffe.

Ratcliffe’s fortune comes from INEOS, a petrochemicals empire built in Britain, reliant on British workers, British infrastructure, British regulation, British natural resources and a British environment that has borne the often devastating costs of fracking, fossil fuel extraction and plastics production. Indeed INEOS’ boss regularly wraps his business in Union Jacks and has described himself as “deeply pro‑British”.

In fact, everything about Jim and his business is British, apart from their tax liabilities. In 2020, Ratcliffe moved his personal tax residence to Monaco, saving himself an estimated £4 billion that could have funded nurses, schools, youth services and libraries. He now splits his time between his house in Monaco and his Hampshire home. This is exactly the kind of dine-and-dash greed we’ve warned the government should be getting tough on.

And his business? INEOS still pays some UK tax, but its contribution is hard to pin down thanks to what The Times calls its “complex structure and reluctance to publish consolidated accounts.” A structure that means despite most of its operations being conducted in the UK, the company books much of its profit elsewhere— parking intellectual property in Switzerland, funnelling management fees abroad, and routing sales through Isle of Man shells with barely any staff. These are classic profit‑shifting tactics used by mega-corporations that helped drain an estimated £14 billion from the UK last year.

While INEOS clearly works hard to minimise what it pays in, it has shown no hesitation taking money out, securing a £120 million state‑aid package last year to keep its Grangemouth site afloat. And Ratcliffe is currently lobbying for even more public funds to help build the surrounding infrastructure to make a new Manchester United (which he owns 25% of) football stadium possible and profitable.

This is the real story of Britain’s decline: an extractive class that squeezes money out of our island anyway they can, shifts profits offshore, dodges taxes, demands government handouts, underpays staff, defunds our public services and then blames migrants and the poor for the consequences of their own greed. Ratcliffe isn’t diagnosing the problem, he is the problem.

What did Ratcliffe get right?

The migration conversation is used as a useful distraction for Ratcliffe and others like him. But its also true that parts of our current immigration system, such as our asylum system are broken, and are costing us far too much. But that system exists in part because of the scapegoating and panic pushed by him those with views like his, in the media and Westminster.

This fearmongering has meant instead of processing claims quickly and ensuring everyone granted status can get on with working and contributing (at which point migrants contribute on average around £19,500 a year to the UK economy), we’ve trapped people seeking safety in endless limbo for months and sometimes years on end— banned from working, surviving on £49 a week, and housed in overcrowded, degrading hotels. If we treated migration as a normal fact of life— an inflow and outflow of workers, taxpayers, neighbours — the system would be cheaper, fairer and far less chaotic.

The current cruel system is driving costs through the roof, with asylum accommodation spending to hit £15.3billion, and once again this money is flowing not to our communities (or to refugees), but to corporate giants like Clearsprings, Mears and Serco, who made eye-watering profits of over £383 million from housing asylum seekers in the last 5 years. Once again, while the rest of us lose out, it’s big corporations, billionaire CEOs and shareholders who cash in, directly through contracts built on suffering, and indirectly by scapegoating the people trapped in the system.

Ultimately we cannot let the people who have systematically drained this country, like Sir Jim Ratcliffe, tell us who to blame for its decline. Britain is still one of the richest countries in the world. We have more than enough wealth to build a fair, thriving society, if we stop letting billionaires siphon it away while distracting us with finger-pointing.

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