Good old Sir Jim Ratcliffe telling it like it is: all our problems would simply vanish if only we would get rid of those pesky migrants. According to Sir Jim, if the migrants were to somehow vanish, getting a doctor’s appointment would be simple, the current obscene levels of inequality would disappear overnight, and the British economy would no longer be centred on a financial sector that is little more than one giant Ponzi scheme. In the never-never land of Sir Jim, the 2008 financial crash, which led to a dramatic reduction in all our wages, was not caused by sleazy bankers but by desperate people risking everything to cross the Channel in inflatable boats.

Blaming all the world’s problems on migrants has a long history, including in the city Sir Jim hails from: Manchester. In the 19th century, Manchester grew from a small backwater into an industrial powerhouse on the back of migrant labour, much of it Irish, fleeing poverty and famine to try and find work in the rapidly expanding cotton mills. Upon arrival, they ended up in a district in Manchester known as “Little Ireland,” which became a byword for grotesque poverty, where life expectancy was little more than 24 years. At the time, the working class generally lived and worked in inhuman conditions, but rather than blame the mill owners, Irish migrants were scapegoated with claims that they were the cause of falling wages. Fast forward a few centuries, amid an almost permanent cost-of-living crisis, and we find migrants once again in the firing line. One wonders if Sir Jim were to get his way, just who would replace the army of migrants who staff Manchester United’s ground on match days, and who would replace the migrants keeping the care sector and National Health Service going.

The other group to attract sunny Jim’s ire was that other traditional scapegoat, the unemployed. Mind you, Sir Jim is a bit of an expert on welfare scrounging, given that his company INEOS is estimated to have received around £800 million in government subsidies from Britain and the EU, while Jimmy, estimated to be worth £17 billion, is trying to secure government funding for the proposed new Manchester United football stadium.

Virtually every study conducted shows that migrants add to the economy by providing labour and paying taxes, which is more than can be said for Sir Jim. The great British patriot fled to Monaco in order to avoid paying taxes, a move estimated to have cost the UK £4 billion in lost tax revenue. Maybe the best solution would be to hang onto the migrants and throw good old Sir Jim out of the country.