Game must reject cynical and clueless electioneering of Ratcliffe

He has already shown himself to be a terrible football club owner at Old Trafford; now the tax exile's ill-informed diatribe about immigration has fanned other flames

- Barney Ronay

Well, for one, am shocked. Shocked to learn that a tax-exiled English expat who made his billions squeezing chemical plants doesn’t have liberal, let alone accurate, views on immigration. Or at least, in public anyway.

It seems highly likely Sir Jim Ratcliffe knew what he was doing in the course of his now semi-recanted Sky News interview. And it is above all vital that at least one part of his empire of influence - football, sport, Manchester United - rejects it, as the club have done to some extent in their statement.

When Ratcliffe bought his stake in United he made some initial attempts at presenting himself as a kind of billionaire of the people, our own clog-clapping son of the cobbles, Eccles cakes tumbling from his turn-ups, essentially on a mission of benevolent regeneration.

In reality Ratcliffe was always here to sack the tea lady. Ineos has a highly successful set of methods. Strip it back. Cut the fat. Access funding. But then, becoming a billionaire is not an act of benevolent collectivism. It requires supreme self-serving narrow focus.

This is simply the landscape.

No doubt we can look forward to the owners of other Premier League football clubs, for example the autocratic ruling families of Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi, disagreeing in the strongest terms with Big Sir Jim’s views, standing up for the little guy, calling for more gruel for everyone.

So yes, there is this point of view. You could easily be cynical, jaded, lost in realpolitik at the revelation that Ratcliffe feels it useful to pretend Britain is in economic difficulty because of an invading army of foreigners. And that Nigel Farage, arch deregulator, seems, in his disinterested view, an entirely reasonable voice on this topic.