Ben Lowry: Jim Ratcliffe was clumsy but largely right in his comments about benefits and immigration - and he should not be apologising about his core points, let alone facing sanction

I am do not follow Manchester United, and am no expert in Sir Jim’s career success, which was in chemicals. But I see no need for him to apologise, except over his phrasing (as he has done).

In fact, we need far more home truths about the problems of mass immigration into the UK and the nation’s massive reliance on benefits – particularly Northern Ireland’s dependence on the latter. Immigration and the reliance of benefits are closely interlinked, because the refusal of native Britons to do certain jobs is often cited as a reason why we need massive inward migration. Sir Jim said that the UK had been “colonised by immigrants,” which was an unfortunate use of words. He was heavily criticised by the prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer (seen in the picture on this page sitting near to him at a Manchester United match), and the Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham and others, after which Ratcliffe said he was sorry if he had “offended some people” for his remarks.

Now, ridiculously, Manchester United and the Football Association have talked about the remarks as if he needs to be formally sanctioned. The fundamentals of what he said were correct.

He said that there were nine million people on benefits in the UK. Fact checkers in the Press Association news agency have put the actual figure (claimants of Universal Credit) at 8.6 million. The Northern Ireland total is 233,000, which is more than 12% of the population.

People have seized on the fact that Sir Jim said that the population of the UK had risen by 12 million since 2020. This claim is very wrong, it has increased by about three million. But the increase in the British population over 20 years has nonetheless been so massive as to be, arguably, disastrous. Net immigration over that time has been a colossal seven million people, change on a scale never before seen on these islands. Actual immigration has been higher, because hundreds of thousands of entrants have been offset by people leaving the country, so the change is even greater than the number seven million suggests.

Consider, for a moment, a cohort of immigrants who only replace in number a cohort of Britons who leave (and set aside, for the purposes of the thought, the reality of net arrivals). The cultural impact of such a swap is not always merely a matter of one in, one out. Any society has to consider additional factors, such as whether or not the people who arrive share the values of the people who leave.

Incredibly, in Britain we have dismissed this sort of assessment as racist, and have refused even to consider such factors.

We are therefore not prepared to examine elementary matters such as whether or not immigrants from certain parts of the world integrate when they come to our stunningly generous and welcoming and tolerant society. As is crystal clear to anyone who has thought about immigration over the last 25 years, the UK has enjoyed hundreds of thousands of immigrants from eastern Europe who have arrived here, assimilated, and worked hard. We have also had countless hard-working immigrants from countries all round the world. such as Nigeria and Syria and the Philippines. But we have also had very large numbers of people, particularly from Muslim societies, who have not integrated at all. We have even had thousands of immigrants – a minority of incomers – who despise western culture before they even arrive.

Other societies simply would not tolerate incomers who show contempt for them. Countries such as Saudi Arabia or Japan, who defend their existing cultures, as every society should do. Yet they are not decried for being racist, but often admired for their belief in their own culture.

And even if there was not such a cultural consideration with regard to immigration, the sheer numbers are staggering. Seven million net arrivals in an already densely populated country, which has put immense pressure on schools and hospitals and on even more basic infrastructure such as housing. It is ten years since I began to write about the huge percentage of people in NI on what was then Disability Living Allowance. To this day there has been no serious examination in the media or at Stormont of whether such numbers are justified, or whether many such people of working age could be working in the jobs that we are told only immigrants will do.

• Ben Lowry (@Benlowry2) is News Letter editor