Jim Ratcliffe is not a polished media performer, and neither does he have an accurate set of UK demographic statistics in his head. But how typical that the Prime Minister and his Labour colleagues, as well as the Guardian and many others, have chosen to latch onto a loose remark the billionaire Manchester United co-owner made about migration rather than address the very genuine concerns he has for the UK economy.

Read between the heavily edited clips from Sky News’s interview with the chemicals entrepreneur and the point he was trying to make when he said that Britain is “being colonised by immigrants” is clear. You cannot grow an economy healthily when you have an ever-expanding number of people on out-of-work benefits. The result is that employers have been forced to turn to migrant labour to fill the gaps. That has helped the economy to grow in recent........

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