Jim Ratcliffe says Britain is on the slide and he has lost confidence

Sir Jim Ratcliffe, the billionaire businessman and part owner of Manchester United, has told the BBC that Britain is on the slide and that he has lost confidence in the country. In an interview with the BBC's business editor Simon Jack, the high-profile Brexit supporter criticised the government's approach to fossil fuels and said he understood why wealthy people were leaving the UK.

Ratcliffe, who founded the energy and petrochemical company Ineos and was the richest man in Britain in 2018, moved his affairs to Monaco in 2020. He was speaking in Denmark, where he launched a carbon capture and storage project part-funded by the European Union. Despite his pro-Brexit record, he accepted EU backing for the scheme.

He gave a withering assessment of successive governments, saying there was no political will to tackle key issues. "Unfortunately, at the moment, I think the UK is on the slide. It's quite difficult to see how we arrest it," he said. "We need politicians who are tough enough to deal with some very difficult problems, and we know what the problems are. And we need politicians who will make decisions which are good for the country, not good for themselves and their party."

He singled out immigration and the benefits system as problems that nobody was tough enough to fix. "Nobody's tough enough to deal with the immigration problem. Nobody's tough enough to deal with benefits problem. But somebody needs to do it. Otherwise, you know, it ends in a bad place."

On energy policy, Ratcliffe warned that Britain faced a very harsh winter because energy storage levels were very low and that gas supplies could run out. He was highly critical of the high cost of doing business in the North Sea oil and gas industry, arguing that taxation was driving companies away. "If you tax everybody to death, they're all going to leave," he said. "Aberdeen is closing down. People are shutting in all the oil and gas, closing down their rigs."

He operates the Forties pipeline, which carries product from about half of the North Sea, and said the industry was declining year on year because of a lack of investment.

A government spokesperson said they were working to deliver growth and that business investment was overall up. They also refuted his claim about energy supplies, saying they were confident in the UK's supply.

Ratcliffe had previously apologised for describing the UK as being colonised by immigrants. He is known for his strong Brexit support and has been a vocal critic of government policy on several fronts.