Owning a football club confers a certain responsibility on a person – to its fans, to the wider community, and to the club’s heritage. Owning Manchester United, however, with its unparalleled worldwide fame, support and reputation, is a position of immense accountability, rather like being a senior politician or even a religious leader (United was once estimated to have more than 650 million followers across the globe, considerably more than practise Buddhism, for example).

Sir Jim Ratcliffe, billionaire industrialist, tax exile resident of Monaco, carries that weight of influence. He is the joint owner of Manchester United, as well as being founder and chairman of Ineos, one of the world’s largest petrochemical companies. His words do not drift harmlessly into the ether; they reverberate with import, and land with a thud. It is this considerable responsibility that Sir Jim has just disavowed in such a spectacular manner in a wide-ranging 15-minute interview with Sky News.

The encounter took place in Antwerp, where Ratcliffe was addressing the European Industry Summit about the problems facing a petrochemicals sector that is beset by carbon taxes, cheap imports, and dramatically squeezed margins. In the interview, he described the present state of the industry as “unsurvivable”, and who are we to gainsay that?

When it comes to petrochemicals, we have to accept that Sir Jim, who has amassed a £17bn fortune in the business, knows what he’s........

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