Colonised, Apparently: How Britain’s Loudest Wallets Keep Blaming Everyone Else
Ratcliffe waves “nine million on benefits” like a pitchfork, Farage brings a dictionary as backup, and the real extraction carries on upstairs, unbothered.
Sir Jim Ratcliffe says Britain is being “colonised”, which is a fascinating choice of words from a man whose relationship with this country is basically, “Love the brand, hate the bill.”
Nigel Farage says Ratcliffe is right, because when a billionaire clears his throat, Farage treats it like the national anthem and stands to attention.
Somewhere between a Monaco residency form and a Reform UK clip filmed in harsh lighting, the word “colonisation” has been dragged out of history and shoved into modern Britain like a stolen museum plaque. And because we are apparently living in the age of confident nonsense, it has been presented as common sense, the way people present a wet sandwich as lunch.
Let’s slow down, because words have consequences, unlike billionaires.
When Ratcliffe reached for “colonised” in his February interview, he could have said “high migration” or “poor planning” or even “we’ve made a mess of housing and public services for forty years and now we need a grown-up plan”. But he went for the vocabulary of empire, like a man rummaging for the sharpest cutlery in the drawer.
He went for “colonised”, because nothing says “reasoned debate” like a historical flamethrower.
This is not a harmless metaphor. It is a power word, a violence word. It is soaked in state-backed conquest, dispossession and extraction, like an old map that still smells of blood and paperwork. Britain exported colonialism around the globe with guns, pens, and the sort of confidence you only get from never being held accountable. So when a billionaire uses that word to describe people moving here to work, study, or keep the NHS from collapsing into a puddle of burnt-out staff, it is not “plain speaking”. It is bait.
And Ratcliffe did not just toss the word in for spice. He stapled it to a welfare rant, then acted surprised when people noticed the staples.
His line, in full, was basically this: you cannot have an economy with “nine million people on benefits and huge levels of immigrants coming in”. The UK has been colonised. It’s costing too much money. He also complained that government lacks the “courage” to stop people “opting to take benefits rather than working for a living”.
Translation, in plain English: it’s the “invaded by freeloaders” script, and only a strong man can save you. It is the kind of speech you make when you want the public to glare at their neighbour instead of looking up at the balcony.
The maths with the structural integrity of a wet teabag
Ratcliffe’s crisis narrative leans on population figures that do not hold up. He claimed the UK went from 58 million people in 2020 to 70 million today. That is a 12 million surge, basically a national teleportation experiment, but only if you live inside a fantasy PowerPoint where numbers are vibes.
The UK was not 58 million in 2020, unless Ratcliffe’s calendar still thinks Blur are top of the charts and dial-up internet is screaming in the background like a dying robot. That number belongs to the mid-1990s, when Britain thought beige food was a personality. By 2020, we were already over 67 million. By 2025, roughly 69.4 million. Growth since 2020 is closer to 2.3 million, not 12, unless you count Ratcliffe’s ego.
You cannot build a national emergency out of a number that belongs in a VHS box, not a briefing.
Still, the inflated number does its job, like a balloon animal at a riot. It creates overwhelm, the political substitute for evidence. It feeds invasion fantasies, the sort sold in tabloids next to miracle diets. It warms up the crowd so the next word lands like a brick.
Colonised, because “managed policy” does not trend.
“Nine million on benefits”, or how to smear a country in one sentence
Now let’s do the welfare bit Ratcliffe welded onto the same rant, because this is where the trick gets uglier.
Yes, there is a big number that loosely resembles what he said. As of late 2025 and early 2026, there are around 8.6 million people on Universal Credit, which rounds up nicely to “nine million” if you are building a panic narrative and you want it to fit on a mug.
But Ratcliffe uses “nine million” the way a bad chef uses salt, to cover up that the main ingredient is contempt. He wants you picturing nine million people choosing the sofa over work, which is a fantasy only available to people who have never had to fill in a Universal Credit journal while their kettle breaks.
Here is what “nine million” actually includes when you stop treating it like a bag of identical villains.
First, roughly 2.3 million Universal Credit claimants are in work. Employed. Doing shifts. Paying tax. Claiming because wages are too low and housing costs are too high, which is what happens when Britain runs an economy where full-time work can still leave you skint by Wednesday.
Second, a massive chunk of claimants have no work requirements at all because they are sick, disabled, caring for someone, in certain education categories, or pension-age people pushed onto Universal Credit through managed migration. This is not “opting out”. This is life happening to you, hard, at speed, with the DWP watching.
Third, the number of people claiming specifically as unemployed, the claimant count, sits far lower. Around 1.6 million in December 2025. That is the group Ratcliffe is pretending represents the whole nine million, because if you admit most claimants are working, ill, disabled, or caring, the “work-shy” fairytale collapses in the spotlight.
Also, Britain has over 2.8 million people out of the workforce due to long-term sickness. You do not fix that by yelling “courage” at them, like it is a motivational poster in a jobcentre.
And for extra irony, the same period also has roughly 730,000 job vacancies. So the country is simultaneously short of workers and full of people who are sick, caring, or stuck in low-paid work, and Ratcliffe’s solution is to call them lazy and blame immigrants. That is not courage. That is a billionaire doing finger puppets with national trauma.
And in shuffles Nigel Farage, like a foghorn in a pub car park
Within days, Farage popped up to defend Ratcliffe, summoned by the faint sound of a billionaire being criticised. Not cautiously, not thoughtfully, but with the full force of a man who mistakes volume for validity.
“Jim Ratcliffe is right,” he declared on YouTube and X, those quiet corners of the internet where nuance goes to die. On Sky News he waved the “dictionary definition” like a priest with holy water, blessing a loaded word as “technically correct”, while suggesting people are “not ready” for it.
Not ready for it. As if the issue is our delicate emotions, rather than the fact he is trying to normalise invasion language about migrants on breakfast telly.
Farage also made a meal of Ratcliffe’s half-apology, the classic manoeuvre where you regret the phrasing but keep the poison. He praised the fact Ratcliffe only apologised for “choice of language”, not the sentiment, then called the underlying message “non-controversial”.
This is pure Farage. He could turn a fire alarm into a fundraising email. He drops an outrage grenade, calls it “plain speaking”, then complains that the smoke is elitist.
Then comes the lazy greatest hits. Farage links “colonisation” to public services and rents, as if GP waiting rooms were built by foreigners overnight. Schools packed. NHS bleeding. Housing hoarded. The holy trinity of things politicians break and then blame on strangers.
The implication is tidy, like sweeping a disaster under the nearest immigrant. If life is worse, it must be the newest person in the room, says every lazy liar ever.
Except it ignores the obvious, because the obvious makes donors nervous.
The country did not break itself by accident
Public services have been squeezed for years, like a lemon that stopped producing juice in 2012 and is still being crushed by ministers with a straight face. Councils have been gutted. Social housing was sold off and never replaced, with promises made in the same tone people promise they will start going to the gym in January.
Infrastructure has been left to crumble. Wages crawl while assets sprint, because Britain is basically a pension fund with roads. Wealth piles up at the top while services unravel below, like a rope bridge financed by hedge funds.
It is easier to point at migrants than at the spreadsheet that did the damage. But the policy did it, quietly, efficiently, and with a press release.
So when Farage says Ratcliffe is highlighting why public services have diminished and rents have gone through the roof, what he is really doing is pushing the most convenient story in British politics. The story where the state is innocent, the rich are brave, and the blame belongs to people with less power than a broken lift.
Patriotism, but only until the invoice arrives
Now comes the bit where the whole performance trips over its own hypocrisy.
Ratcliffe moved his personal tax residency to Monaco in 2020, because patriotism is lovely until the invoice arrives. Legally, smoothly, lucratively. His personal UK income tax bill is widely reported as close to nil since moving to Monaco, like his credibility when he gives lectures about who is “costing too much”.
Meanwhile, the skilled migrant worker is paying income tax, national insurance, and a four-figure NHS cover charge through the Immigration Health Surcharge, like the country is a nightclub with a broken toilet and a bouncer who hates you. Many migrants are also legally barred from accessing most benefits because of “No Recourse to Public Funds” conditions, yet they still get accused of draining benefits anyway, which is magical thinking in a suit.
And if Ratcliffe wants to do the “costing the state money” routine, it is worth noting the state has been rather friendly to him too. INEOS received a £120 million government grant in December 2025 to support the Grangemouth plant, and Ratcliffe has also been lobbying for public funds reportedly up to £2 billion to help regenerate the area around a new Manchester United stadium. You can argue about industrial policy and regeneration all day, but you cannot play the hard man about welfare spending while asking taxpayers to help bankroll your industrial and football ambitions in the same breath.
So when Ratcliffe moans about costs and Farage calls it courage, the comparison writes itself in big, rude letters. Who’s paying in, who’s cashing out, and who built a system that rewards extraction.
If you insist on saying “colonisation”, apply it properly
Colonisation is not simply movement. It is power plus extraction. It is dispossession. It is concentration of wealth. It is the taking of common resources and turning them into private profit, then blaming the locals for being upset about it.
If colonisation means extraction and dispossession, then the suspects are not the people on visas, but the people with accountants.
Look at the privatisation era. Water, energy, rail, care, housing, a conveyor belt of essential services shoved into private hands and told to “innovate”, which in Britain mostly means “charge more, deliver less, and apologise through a call centre”. Look at how profits are pulled out, debt is loaded on, and customers are treated like captive wallets.
Look at corporate lobbying and political influence, where big money shapes policy like damp shapes a rental flat. Regulations become “burdens”. Wages become “costs”. Subsidies become “support”, especially when the company is important enough to threaten closure on a Tuesday morning.
Look at housing turned into investment portfolios, with landlords calling mould “character” and developers calling a shoebox “luxury”, because it has a socket. Look at infrastructure treated like a dividend slot machine, jackpot for them, sparks for you.
That is extraction. That is dispossession. That is power. That is far closer to the mechanics of colonisation than a nurse or engineer trying to build a life while paying taxes, paying surcharges, and being told they are the problem.
The Farage courtship angle, or donor perfume in the air
There is another layer here, and it is not subtle. Before the February controversy, Farage was actively trying to woo Ratcliffe. Meeting requests. Shared concerns. Net Zero moaned about. Energy costs weaponised. The usual greatest hits.
Farage wants business legitimacy and Ratcliffe is useful as a symbol, the “successful British industrialist” who is allegedly brave enough to say what Westminster will not. Farage praises him as tough, courageous, an example of the kind of “unpopular leader” Britain needs. It is the political equivalent of pointing at a rich man’s watch and calling it a plan.
Ratcliffe, for his part, has met figures across the political spectrum while insisting he is neutral, and has publicly ruled out donating to Reform UK. “I can’t see myself paying for policies,” he reportedly said, and somewhere an accountant wept with pride.
That line says more than it means to. It is not just about parties. It is about the modern elite’s relationship with the state. They want the infrastructure, the courts, the workforce, the stability, the prestige, the grants when convenient, the flags at the photo opportunities. They just do not want the part where they pay for it.
Even the football makes the point for you
Manchester United is a global brand fuelled by foreign talent, sponsorship money, and nostalgia fumes. The Premier League is Britain’s shiniest export, like empire, but with more hair gel. It runs on people crossing borders, as long as they cross them in a club tracksuit.
So when a co-owner whines about immigrants as “colonisers”, the irony is so loud it could referee a match. Britain loves foreigners when they score, sell shirts, or boost the sponsor deck. Britain panics when foreigners do normal life things, like working, renting, and needing a doctor, the scandal.
The difference isn’t movement, it’s class. It’s who gets to be called “talent” instead of “threat” at the very end.
The actual crisis is not the one they are selling
Britain is not being colonised by immigrants. Britain is being strip-mined by people in boardrooms, and then lectured by the same people through a microphone.
It is being milked by a system that shields the powerful, pampers the wealthy, subsidises the well-connected, and scapegoats everyone else, on repeat, forever, until the public stops falling for the trick.
And until we say it plainly, “colonised” is not analysis, it’s a dog whistle.
It’s misdirection, with a billionaire pointing and a demagogue clapping at the end.
Stay warm. Stay loud. Stay allergic to bullshit.
Willy & Bill
North West Bylines - Citizen Journalist
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Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s “Colonisation” Interview
Ratcliffe’s specific choice of words occurred during a televised interview with Sky News on February 11, 2026.
https://news.sky.com/video/ratcliffe-colonisation-comments-correct-says-farage-13506860
The Population Data (58m vs 70m)
The claim that the UK population was 58 million in 2020 is factually incorrect. Official ONS data shows the population hit 58 million in 1995.
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/jim-ratcliffe-gdp-germany-manchester-united-b1270848.html
The Welfare and “9 Million” Claim
The breakdown of the 8.6–9 million Universal Credit claimants shows that roughly 2.3 million are in work and millions more are disabled or carers.
Citizens Advice Analysis
Nigel Farage’s Response
Nigel Farage defended the use of the word “colonisation” as “technically correct” according to the dictionary.
https://news.sky.com/video/nigel-farage-jim-ratcliffes-colonisation-comments-were-correct-13506811
Tax Residency and Savings
Sir Jim Ratcliffe moved his personal tax domicile to Monaco in 2020, a move widely reported to save him billions in UK tax.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/feb/11/uk-immigrants-man-utd-sir-jim-ratcliffe-tax-monaco
Government Grants to INEOS
Despite criticizing the “cost” of the state, Ratcliffe’s company received a major taxpayer-funded support package in December 2025.
Manchester United Stadium and Squad
Ratcliffe has lobbied for public infrastructure support for a new stadium, while the club’s on-field success relies on international “migrant” talent.
https://centredevils.co.uk/news/manchester-united-requests-government-to-help-with-funds/
The “Colonisation” Definition and Context
Sociologists and historians have weighed in on why the term “colonisation” is a power-laden historical misrepresentation.
https://www.bigissue.com/news/social-justice/jim-ratcliffe-immigration-debunked/
Because nothing is ever their fault. Money makes everything better, right and glorious...
Or something.
Someone please pass me a bucket, stat? I feel an urge to hurl. I really ought to post longer form on this topic at some point. But I'm so tired from working to keep the money coming in while battling what has become chronic illness for the last 18 months... Of course no helpful sugar daddy handouts from any of these moneyed types to allow me to gain best recovery without having to worry about the finances as well. No, of course not.