Manchester United Muslim fans demand Ratcliffe's exit over empire comments

Sir Jim Ratcliffe, the billionaire co-owner of Manchester United, has become the target of a formal call for his removal from the club following comments he made during a BBC interview about Britain's decline. Speaking on the network's Big Boss Interview program, Ratcliffe traced the country's problems to high taxes and immigration, and invoked Britain's imperial past as a measure of lost greatness. "We had the greatest empire in the world," he said. "We were a great people. We won two world wars. We're good, honest folk. But unfortunately, at the moment, I think the UK is on the slide."

Manchester United's Muslim Supporters' Club responded with what it termed a "statement of no confidence" posted to social media, calling Ratcliffe's remarks "completely unacceptable" and demanding that both he and the Glazer family, the club's other co-owners, step down. The group framed the club itself as belonging to its diverse workforce and fan base—players, staff, stewards, security teams, and supporters from different countries, cultures, ethnicities, religions, and backgrounds—rather than to investment funds or billionaires. "Manchester United would not be Manchester United without them," the statement read. The club's Muslim supporters added that they had hoped Ratcliffe would learn from similar comments he made seven months earlier, when he told Sky News that Britain was being "colonised by immigrants." He had apologized for those remarks if they had "offended some people," but the latest interview suggested no change in his thinking.

Ratcliffe, who founded the petrochemicals company Ineos and has lived in Monaco since 2020—a jurisdiction with a notably relaxed tax regime—attributed Britain's problems partly to what he called a cultural hostility toward wealth creation. He contrasted the United States, where he said wealthy people are celebrated, with the UK, where he suggested the wealthy face discouragement. "In America, they applaud people who create wealth," he told the BBC podcast. He argued that high taxes and an unwelcoming environment had prompted successful entrepreneurs to leave the country. While Britain's tax burden has indeed risen to its highest level since the Second World War at roughly 35.3 percent of GDP, the Office for Budget Responsibility notes that this figure remains well below the average of fourteen Western European economies.

The call for Ratcliffe's exit arrives amid already substantial friction between him and Manchester United's supporter base. Over the summer, the club implemented a major crackdown on ticket reselling that resulted in the revocation of 685 season tickets, sparking protests from supporter groups including the 1958. Earlier, Ratcliffe had overseen ticket price increases and the dismissal of 450 club employees, decisions that deepened his unpopularity at Old Trafford. His comments about Britain's energy policy—he called the government's decision not to license the Jackdaw and Rosebank oil and gasfields "insanity" and warned that the country could "run out of gas" during a severe winter—added another layer of controversy, though a government spokesperson said the country's diverse energy mix and supply security remained secure.

When asked whether he planned to return to the UK, Ratcliffe declined, saying he saw no evidence that growth was being addressed. He called for politicians "tough enough" to tackle difficult problems and willing to make decisions in the country's interest rather than their own. The Muslim Supporters' Club's statement reflected a broader frustration with the current ownership structure, describing years of decline, broken promises, and repeated failure. For a club with a global fanbase and a workforce spanning continents, the tension between Ratcliffe's vision of national decline and the club's lived reality as a genuinely multinational institution has become impossible to ignore.