Manchester Disunited: Toxic, far-right rhetoric needs to be condemned in the strongest manner possible

People hate Manchester United for all sorts of irrational reasons. True, they were the dominant force in English football for a long time under Alex Ferguson. And no one who isn’t a supporter likes one team to dominate to the extent that United did between 1993 and 2013.

Over those 20 years, United won the Premier League 13 times, the FA Cup five times, the Champions League twice and the FIFA Club World Cup once.

There was a personal aspect to it as well. Whatever you might think about him as a football man, Alex Ferguson was never a cuddly, likeable type. He was infamous for shouting and roaring at players. He frequently came across as a bully. In their pomp, some of the players could seem arrogant too. All of which meant that the ABU – Anyone But United – motif was an understandable one.

But all of that was a long time ago. And besides, at their best they could be breath-taking to watch. Some wonderful footballers played for Manchester United, and many of them were honest, unassuming types, who went about the job with quiet brilliance, a strand that might be most accurately personified in two of the Irishmen who played under Alex Ferguson, Paul McGrath and Denis Irwin, or better still perhaps by the 66-times capped England midfielder, Paul Scholes.

The way football has evolved since Ferguson retired, ABU might easily have become ABC. That old hostility should, on the face of it, have transferred to Manchester City, who won six Premier League titles in the seven years between 2017 and 2024. But it hasn’t happened. In part at least that’s because City’s manager Pep Guardiola is a very different creature to Ferguson. He has none of the arrogance or the aggressive bluster. And the fact that he has been hugely successful elsewhere, at Barcelona and Bayern Munich, means that he enhances the perception of Manchester City as a club.

In fairness, the fact that they are owned by Sheik Mansour bin Zayed Al Nayhan, the Deputy Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates and a member of the Abu Dhabi royal family, is a perfectly valid reason to hope they never win anything ever again. But somehow, even that seems to be forgiven because the individuals in the shifting cast of players assembled by Guardiola have consistently impressed as reasonable, level-headed, relatively decent human beings.

The bizarre thing is that, even well over a decade since the end of the Ferguson era, the hatred of United persists. And yet, and yet...

However irrational or unfair that might have seemed a few weeks ago, the good news for the ABU crew is that all of that has changed utterly over the past two weeks, to an extent that surpasses any deserved hostility that Alex Ferguson might ever have invited, by a country mile…

IGNORANT SCARE-MONGERING

You remember the spiel when Jim Ratcliffe bought into Manchester United and was given control of the footballing side of the club by the much-reviled majority shareholders, the Glazer family from Rochester, New York, in the USA? He was English, a proper fan of football and – being from Salford – also of Manchester United.

He knows far more about the game than those damn Yanks, the popular wisdom went; he ‘gets’ the values of the club; and (it was said with a knowing superiority), he has no human rights issues to apologise for…

Since then, as history will record, we’ve seen the rotten, mean-spirited, monetarist way in which Ratcliffe went about cutting the staff at his new plaything. Whatever claims Manchester United might have had to being a people’s club crashed into grubby reality when Ratcliffe axed 450 jobs, closed the staff canteen and sacked the club’s longest-serving employee.

A real local boy alright, with the interests of the community at heart.

Old Trafford Stadium, Manchester

Was it just then that people started to take a closer look at Ineos, the chemicals company through which Ratcliffe has made his billions? The picture there, it has emerged, is far from rosy, with widespread accusations of plastic pollution, under-reporting of emissions, breaching of environmental regulations, increasing use of fossil fuels, tone deaf advocacy of fracking, and – inevitably – sports-washing.

For anyone with an ounce of objectivity, the sentimental Ratcliffe halo disappeared some time ago. The reality, of course, is that you are rather unlikely to become a billionaire several times over by being a community worker at heart. But clearly, in his dealings with Manchester United, this guy has been shamelessly driven by the bottom line. How, then, was – or is – he superior to the Glazers?

The short answer is: he isn’t.

In fact, he has now succeeded in the rather difficult task of making the Glazers seem like decent people – at least by comparison.

Ratcliffe did an interview with Sky News recently, and what he had to say exposed him as a self-serving, self-important, mendacious creep, straight out of the Farage Reform school.

“You can’t have an economy with nine million people on benefits and huge levels of immigrants coming in,” he told the Sky News economics editor Ed Conway. “I mean, the UK has been colonised. It’s costing too much money. The UK has been colonised by immigrants, really, hasn’t it?”

Is the man entirely stupid? Is he not aware that it was the British who were guilty of colonising vast tracts that didn’t belong to them across the world? That it was by brute force that Britain acquired the endless amount of wealth that was stolen from, and is still owed to, Africans, Arabs, Indians, West Indians, Australians, Canadians, Irish, and many more besides? And that accusing immigrants of colonising Britain looks like nothing more than a clown’s attempt to turn reality on its head?

Perhaps he is entirely stupid. Even I could have told him immediately that the following was completely wrong.

“I mean, the population of the UK was 58 million in 2020,” he went on, “now it’s 70 million. That’s 12 million people.”

No it’s not. That is ignorant scare-mongering. It is fake news regurgitated. It is disinformation.

In 2020, the population of the UK was 66.7million. Five years later, in 2025, it was 69.4million. That’s a difference of 2.7million, not twelve. So the great billionaire Jim Ratcliffe’s maths were out by almost 10 million.

MEALY-MOUTHED APOLOGY

Even more laughable is anyone running a top level Premier League football club belly-aching about immigration.

How many of Manchester United’s first team squad are English?

Go on, guess.

Of a squad of 34, only four are English: Harry Maguire, Mason Mount, Luke Shaw and Kobbie Mainoo. That’s about 12%.

In fact, Mainoo, who was born in Stockport, is a classic product of British imperialism. His parents are both from the former British colony of Ghana. They were immigrants to the UK. Kobbie could have played for Ghana. In Jim Ratcliffe’s twisted mind, his parents should not be in the UK.

So to describe Ratcliffe’s comments as hypocritical is to understate it greatly. They are absurd, nasty and poisonous. The reality is that Manchester United could not function without immigrant footballers. In fact the entire Premier League would collapse without them. The business model would be fucked. Approximately 70% of all the players in the Premier League are foreigners. Plain and simple, they are immigrants. But they are very good at what they do.

Might that not tell you something, Jim?

Ratcliffe’s interview was in fact designed as a kind of party political broadcast-lite on behalf of the Reform Party, led by the execrable Nigel Farage. Ratcliffe said that he had met Farage recently, and went on to describe him as an intelligent man, with good intentions.

That will have elicited more than a few chuckles, given Farrago’s Putin and Trump fandom. Ratcliffe failed to mention Farage’s racism and bigotry. And he parroted all the usual Reform talking points.

There may, indeed, be people who listened sympathetically to what he was saying about the ‘cost’ of immigration. I mean, all the money that poor Jim Ratcliffe has to pay in tax, being lavished on welfare payments for the 12 million recently arrived spongers? Why should, er, Sir Jim have to pay for people coming to the UK just to lounge around drinking Rum Punch Cocktails, smoking spliffs and listening to reggae music?

There is only one problem. Like a lot of British billionaires, and a few Irish ones too, in 2020, Sir Jim – that great, unselfish servant of the Crown – moved his domicile from the UK to Monaco, where they collect neither personal income tax nor capital gains tax. The Sunday Times ‘Rich List’ says that Ratcliffe is worth £17 billion. But he doesn’t pay tax.

Can’t afford to, I guess.

“If you really want to deal with the major issues of immigration,” Ratcliffe opined, “with people opting to take benefits rather than working for a living, if you want to deal with that, then you’re going to have to do some things which are unpopular, and show some courage.”

Like, say, the courage it takes to move your tax affairs to a tax haven?

Ratcliffe claimed that there are 9 million people on benefits in the UK. That too is deliberately misleading. There are 6.5million people claiming benefits who are out of work. However, of these, current estimates say that approximately 85% – or 5.4 million – are from the UK. So the suggestion that immigrants are responsible for the high cost of welfare in the UK is another slander, another lie.

Is the man a dunce, a liar or a fraud – or perhaps a mix of all three?

He was also wrong in his Trumpian claim that manufacturing was “about” 25% of GDP in the UK, in 1995. In fact it was 15%. So what we have here is a classic case of utterly misplaced nostalgia for the Empire years, from a man who – like a lot of the old colonial masters – thinks that the only role that non-English people have to play is that of gillies or slaves. Or footballers. And if they are not Premiership class ‘ballers, they should fuck off back to where they came from, once they have been exploited to the max.

Did it not occur to Ratcliffe that – in addition to insulting almost the entire first team playing squad – he was also insulting a very significant proportion of Manchester United’s fanbase, in the UK and across the world?

No wonder the Glazers are said to be horrified at Ratcliffe’s comments. What if all those foreigners – in England and elsewhere – decided not to buy any more United merch in protest? Thinking on their feet (and doubtless with their latest bank statement to hand) Manchester United issued a statement, apparently signed off by the Glazers, emphasising that Manchester United is a proud multi-cultural club, which is inclusive and welcoming.

“Our diverse group of players, staff and global community of supporters, reflect the history and heritage of Manchester; a city that anyone can call home,” the statement said. “Manchester United reflects the unity and resilience of all the communities we are so privileged to represent. We will continue to represent our people, our city and our fans with purpose and pride.”

The good guys?

Even Keir Starmer was on the right side of this one, branding Ratcliffe’s comments “offensive and wrong.”

The anti-discrimination campaigners Kick It Out said the comments were “disgraceful and deeply divisive.”

Show Racism the Red Card raised the offside flag.

“Language of this kind,” they said in a statement, “echoes narratives that have historically been used to stigmatise migrant communities, fuel division, and legitimise hostility towards minority groups.”

Pep Guardiola weighed in to say, correctly, that societies are stronger for embracing diversity.

Pep Guardiola. Credit: Steffen Prößdorf

For his part, Jim Ratcliffe subsequently issued a mealy-mouthed apology. “I’m sorry that my choice of language has offended some people in the UK and Europe and caused concern,”  he said.

Which of course leaves open the possibility that they are wrong to “be offended.” And that, in any event, the substance of what he said was right.

But the apology wasn’t just mealy-mouthed – it was racist. People in Africa don’t merit mention. Or South America. Or the Middle East. Even though there are players from all of these places currently at Manchester United.

DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS

Of course, there is some encouragement to be gleaned from seeing just how badly the billionaire’s comments have been received, with numerous Manchester United supporters’ groups also making their unhappiness and disapproval clear. Maybe if they hit him hard enough in his wallet, he will slope off to Monaco where, apparently, he belongs.

But there are deeper issues here.

The first is that mainstream politicians should stop ceding ground to the prejudiced swine in Trump’s America, to the  Nazis in the AfD  in Germany, to Le Pen’s National Front in France, to Reform in the UK and to the grubby stew of right and far-right wind-bags in Ireland, and elsewhere. All that’s achieved by appeasement, and joining in their anti-immigrant rhetoric, is to give legitimacy to stupidity, disinformation and naked prejudice.

The second is to get real about migration and its causes.

Migration is largely a function of war, climate change, poverty and autocratic oppression. The way to reduce it is by enabling the United Nations to carry out its mandate in relation to peacekeeping, health and development.

As President of the USA, Donald Trump attacks migrants in the most venal, racist language. He claims that he wants to reduce it, or bring an end to it. But he has a plan that would involve 2 million or more people being forced out of Gaza, for no other reason than that there is an opportunity to make millions of dollars there.

Trump could enable Ukrainian citizens to return to their homeland if he put the weight of the US fully behind Ukraine’s right to defend its territory, but instead, he is bullying them to hand over a vast area that was home to approximately 6 million people before the Russian invasion, that will end up with tens – or more likely hundreds – of thousands of Ukrainians having to leave their homes in the Donbas.

He could exert effective diplomatic pressure to end the proxy war in Sudan between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates that has seen hundreds of thousands killed, genocide being carried out in the city of El Fasher and 3.5 million forced to migrate.

And he could, along with other member States in the UN, begin the work that would change the prevailing conditions in countries that have seen a high level of emigration or migration.

Ending poverty. Addressing climate change. Promoting equality. Minimising corruption. Developing schools and education. Improving infrastructure. Making water available. Doing the constructive things that reduce the potential for famine. Helping to make it attractive for people to stay and work in their own communities, their own homes.

There are people who will always want to travel and to seek a better or different life elsewhere. But migration is generally a product of disadvantage, of insecurity, of starvation, of political violence, of a sense of hopelessness and despair. Repression, and more repression, is not the way to end it. Hunting people down, as Trump’s violent paramilitary organisation ICE does in the US, involves appalling breaches of human rights, sees innocent people being locked up and ends up with ordinary citizens being shot dead on the streets. It is a vicious trap into which Europe must not fall.

If the money poured into this and similar authoritarian anti-immigrant campaigns were put instead into addressing the root causes of migration – and the same approach were taken by all democratic nations – it could and would change the game in a decent and humane way.

We have to go back to the principles enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. That’s what the Fine Gael leader and Tánaiste, Simon Harris, should be fighting and arguing for, rather than joining the chorus of boors and bigots. And Irish artists and musicians should let him – and the other major parties including Sinn Fein – know that playing to the right wing gallery on migration will cost them seats at the next general election.

The time to fight for human rights is now...