Badenoch (right) will give a welcome address at the conference, with her party under increasing pressure from Farage (left) and Reform UK. Composite: PA
Event co-founded by Jordan Peterson will bring together global rightwing figures including senior US Republicans
Influential rightwingers from around the world are to gather in London from Monday at a major conference to network and build connections with senior US Republicans linked to the Trump administration.
The UK opposition leader, the Conservatives’ Kemi Badenoch, and Nigel Farage of the Reform UK party, her hard-right anti-immigration rival, will compete to present themselves as the torchbearer of British conservatism.
Conservatives from Britain, continental Europe and Australia attending the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) conference will seize on the opportunity to meet and hear counterparts from the US, including those with links to the new Trump administration. The House speaker, the Republican Mike Johnson, had been due to attend in person but will now give a keynote address remotely on Monday.
Other Republicans due to speak include the US Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Vivek Ramaswamy – who has worked with Elon Musk on moves to radically reshape the US government – and Kevin Roberts, the president of the US Heritage Foundation, the thinktank behind the controversial “Project 2025” blueprint for Trump’s second term.
The conference, which is intended to be a gathering of influential intellectuals shaping global rightwing thinking, has a distinctly anti-environmental and socially conservative theme. It pledges to build on “our growing movement and continue the vital work of relaying the foundations of our civilisation”.
Palestinian children play next to buildings destroyed by Israeli army strikes in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, January 7, 2025
PRESSURE continues to mount on the government over its backing for Israel and its failure to take any serious measures to impede its genocide of the Palestinian people.
MPs from all parts of the Commons united at the first opportunity in the new year to demand that ministers act.
Even many Tory backbenchers — although not Kemi Badenoch’s front bench — seem disgusted at Britain’s continuing complicity with Israeli war crimes.
Vocal support for Israel seems to be draining away on the Labour back benches, while Liberal Democrat, SNP, Green and independent MPs are more-or-less united in urging a change of course.
There are several concrete actions they are demanding that the government should take.
First is an end to all arms sales to the Israeli regime. So far the government has only suspended a minority of the licences which permit the export of British military equipment to Israel.
Yet there is now little room for doubt that the Israeli military is engaging in war crimes daily and is in continual breach of international law.
Continuing to supply the Israeli war machine with equipment makes ministers themselves culpable for the consequences.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAUK Foreign Minister David Lammy confirms that UK government and military are active participants in Israel’s genocides and that the F-35 parts that they suspended from supplying to Israel are instead simply diverted via the United States. He says see https://youtu.be/QILgUHrdWRE
Vice president elect JD Vance and Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch. Credit: JD Vance / X
The Conservative leader, who attacked “radical green absolutism” in a Washington DC speech, recently met with a host of influential anti-climate figures.
Speaking to an audience in Washington DC last week, Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch declared that the conservative desire to “protect the natural world” had been “hacked, replaced by a radical green absolutism”.
“Looking after our planet became an exclusive discussion about net zero and reducing emissions, and alongside it the growth of activist government to regulate it,” she said.
Badenoch was giving the keynote speech at the centre-right International Democracy Union (IDU) Forum on 5 December. According to her team, she was in the U.S. to build ties with the Republican Party following the election of Donald Trump as the next president.
In keeping with her speech, the new friends that Badenoch spent time with during the trip – vice president elect JD Vance, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, and Canadian Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre – have spread climate science denial and received funding from the fossil fuel industry.
Badenoch describes herself as a “net zero sceptic” and has suggested that the UK’s 2050 target for achieving net zero emissions would “bankrupt the country”. As DeSmog has reported, her political advisors have attacked the UK’s climate goals, and her campaign for Tory leader was backed by Neil Record, chair of Net Zero Watch, an arm of the Global Warming Policy Foundation climate denial group.
Her ministers Priti Patel and Robert Jenrick have ties to the Heritage Foundation, the U.S. think tank behind the Project 2025 blueprint for a second Trump term, which proposes the rollback of climate policies and environmental protections.
Here’s what you need to know about Badenoch’s new anti-green allies.
JD Vance
Badenoch reportedly had an hour-long dinner with vice president elect JD Vance, during which they “renewed their friendship”.
Vance has a history of dismissing human-caused climate change. In 2021, he told the American Leadership Forum, a U.S. Christian group: “I’m skeptical of the idea that climate change is caused purely by man”. He added: “It’s been changing, as others pointed out, it’s been changing for millennia.”
During this year’s U.S. presidential election, Vance repeatedly attacked the Biden administration’s climate policies as “the Green new scam”.
Former venture capitalist Vance received a total of $352,000 (around £276,000) from the fossil fuel industry between 2019 and 2024, according to campaign finance database OpenSecrets.
Ron DeSantis
The Tory leader also met with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who ran to be the Republican nominee for president this year.
DeSantis, who endorsed Badenoch to be Conservative leader, has described climate change as a “religion” and has passed laws to curb action to tackle it.
In October, when asked about the role of climate change in two hurricanes off the Florida Gulf Coast, DeSantis said: “I don’t subscribe to your religion.”
Hurricanes are fuelled by warmer waters, meaning that more devastating hurricanes are directly linked to rising temperatures. Consequently, as the Florida Climate Center has pointed out: “A larger proportion of storms have reached major hurricane strength in recent years, along with an increase in rapid intensification events.”
DeSantis went on to defend the continued extraction of fossil fuels, saying climate action would involve: “Taxing [people] to smithereens, stopping oil and gas, making people pay dramatically more for energy; we would collapse as a country.”
Earlier this year, DeSantis signed a bill into law that would delete references to climate change from all state legislation. In May he posted on X in support of the bill: “Florida rejects the designs of the left to weaken our energy grid [and] pursue a radical climate agenda”.
Mike Johnson
Badenoch also reportedly met with Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives.
In 2017, Johnson told a public meeting with constituents: “I am not a big proponent of the climate change data because I have seen data on the other side.”
He added: “The climate is changing, but the question is, is climate changing because of natural cycles in the atmosphere over the span of history, or is it changing because we drive SUVs? I don’t believe in the latter. I don’t think that’s the primary driver.”
In reality, authors working for the world’s foremost climate science body, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), have said that “it is a statement of fact, we cannot be any more certain; it is unequivocal and indisputable that humans are warming the planet”.
The IPCC has also stated that carbon dioxide “is responsible for most of global warming” since the late 19th century, which has increased the “severity and frequency of weather and climate extremes, like heat waves, heavy rains, and drought” – all of which “will put a disproportionate burden on low-income households and thus increase poverty levels.”
Johnson has repeatedly voted against action to tackle rising temperatures, including laws that would require oil and gas companies to disclose the climate risks of their activities, while supporting cuts to the federal Environmental Protection Agency.
He has also received around $240,000 (more than £118,000) in campaign donations from the oil and gas industry, according to OpenSecrets.
Pierre Poilievre
Badenoch’s North American trip also saw her visit Toronto, where she met with Pierre Poilievre, leader of the Canadian Conservative Party.
Declaring that conservative leaders in Canada and the UK were “uniting over shared values”, Badenoch posted on X calling Poilievre “an impressive and thoughtful figure” and “a new friend and ally”.
As DeSmog reported in March, Poilievre has voted against climate and environmental legislation nearly 400 times during his parliamentary career.
Poilievre has also campaigned against a carbon tax in Canada, and has supported Canadian oil and gas extraction, calling it “the most ethical and environmentally sound in the world”.
The Free Press
Badenoch also recorded a podcast with The Free Press, a conservative platform which has published attacks on climate science and action.
In 2022, it ran an article by climate crisis denier Michael Shellenberger arguing that the West’s “green delusions”, and its attempts to transition away from fossil fuels, had “empowered” Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin.
In September 2023, the platform published an article by U.S. scientist Patrick Brown, who heads a climate unit at Shellenberger’s Breakthrough Institute, claiming he had been pressured by Nature magazine to make a paper on wildfires fit a climate change “narrative” – claims rejected by the magazine and other scientists.
Warren Stephens. Credit: The Golfer’s Journal / YouTube
Campaigners warn that the UK will face “pressure from American fossil fuel interests” to slow its energy transition.
U.S. president-elect Donald Trump’s pick to be UK ambassador runs a firm with investments in several oil and gas companies, DeSmog can reveal.
Billionaire Warren Stephens, a major Trump donor who was nominated on Monday to be the next UK ambassador, is chairman, president, and CEO of Stephens Inc., one of the largest privately-owned investment banks in the U.S..
The firm’s portfolio includes at least five companies that make their money from oil and gas exploration and production, including one, Stephens Natural Resources, which is “solely owned” by the Stephens family business.
“President-elect Trump’s promise to boost U.S. fossil fuel production is reflected in his choice of UK ambassador, raising concerns about the potential impact on the UK’s own climate leadership”, said Fossil Free Parliament campaigner Carys Boughton.
Tessa Khan, executive director of the environmental campaign group Uplift, told DeSmog the appointment was a sign that “the UK is going to be under pressure from American fossil fuel interests to slow its transition away from oil and gas”.
Trump has vowed to “drill, baby, drill” for oil and gas in the U.S. while his presidential campaign received the backing of major fossil fuel interests. The president-elect has called climate change a “hoax” and is expected to once again pull the U.S. out of the flagship 2015 Paris Agreement, which established a global ambition to limit warming to 1.5C above industrial levels.
The Stephens hire comes just weeks after the UK Labour government unveiled an ambitious new climate target to cut emissions by 81 percent by 2035. The move was criticised by Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch, who this week flew to Washington DC reportedly to build ties with senior Republicans ahead of a second Trump presidency.
As DeSmog revealed last week, Badenoch has hired advisors who have criticised climate action and have links to fossil fuel-funded think tanks. Badenoch, who describes herself a “net zero sceptic” has also received donations from the head of Net Zero Watch, a climate science denial group.
Oil and Gas Investments
Stephens Inc.’s investments in oil and gas include Stephens Natural Resources, a company run by Warren’s uncle Witt Stephens.
The company, which trades as Stephens Production, “has a rich history of drilling and producing both oil and natural gas”, according to its website, and “continues to expand its production and reserves in the continental U.S. and offshore Gulf of Mexico”.
The company is “solely owned” by the Stephens family, whose investment stretches back to 1953, according to the website.
Stephens Inc.’s other current investments, which date back to the mid-2010s, include Four Corners Petroleum, an oil exploration and production company based in Colorado.
Stephens Inc. lists RK Supply in its portfolio, a “leading distributor of piping, oil and gas valves, fittings, and other oilfield service equipment” based in Texas. It also lists Dakota Midstream, a company that “provides infrastructure support to oil and gas exploration and production”, based in Colorado.
Another company in the Stephen Inc. portfolio, Texas-based Basin Oil & Gas, buys “non-operating oil and gas interests”, and is developing carbon capture and sequestration projects. Carbon capture is a favoured climate solution of the oil and gas industry, and is often used simply to extract more fossil fuels.
Stephens Inc. lists a firm called Capture Point in its portfolio, which specialises in enhanced oil recovery – a method for extracting hard-to-get oil. Capture Point told DeSmog that Stephens Inc. was not an investor in the company, though did not respond when asked if Stephens Inc. was previously an investor.
All the companies cited were approached for comment.
Trump Tensions
Stephens’s appointment comes at a critical time for the UK’s energy transition, and highlights the differences between the new Labour government and the incoming Trump administration.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer last month attended the COP29 climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, pledging that the UK would restore its role “as a climate leader on the world stage”. In its 2024 election manifesto, Starmer’s Labour Party pledged to ban all new licenses for oil and gas exploration in the North Sea. However, after five months in office, the government has yet to implement that promise.
“While the UK government has pledged to turn the UK into a ‘clean energy superpower’, it has not enacted its manifesto commitment to ban new licenses, nor provided a plan for a just transition away from fossil fuels”, Carys Boughton told DeSmog.
“Trump’s choice of ambassador will gift the fossil fuel industry yet more influence within UK politics, which is particularly concerning while the government is still wavering on the future of fossil fuels.
“It is therefore yet more important that the government take action to restrict fossil fuel industry influence – to protect its developing climate and energy policy from the industry’s polluting interests.”
As DeSmog has reported, Trump’s would-be energy secretary Chris Wright, chief executive of fracking company Liberty Energy, has praised Danish climate crisis denier Bjorn Lomborg as a friend. Wright’s nomination was welcomed by the CO2 Coalition, a climate science denial group which has received funding from the Koch Industries oil dynasty.
Analysis by the climate outlet Heated found that all of Trump’s cabinet picks have made misleading statements about climate change.
Science denial and an enthusiasm for fossil fuels are also views shared by Trump’s UK supporters. In September, DeSmog reported that Trump ally Nigel Farage, the Clacton MP and leader of Reform UK, was a keynote speaker at an event in Chicago run by the Heartland Institute, where he called on the U.S. to “drill, baby, drill” for more fossil fuels.
“It’s no surprise that this appointment – like the rest of Trump’s administration – is shot through with oil and gas interests”, Uplift’s Tessa Khan, told DeSmog.
“Fossil fuel companies will prove extremely influential in the incoming U.S. government, and they want nations across the world to remain hooked on oil and gas for years to come just so they can keep profiting.
“The UK is going to be under pressure from American fossil fuel interests to slow its transition away from oil and gas. To succumb would be against the UK’s national interest”.
Downing Street accepts ‘clear risk’ that fighter jet parts sold to Israel could be used to violate international humanitarian law, High Court hears
THE British government accepts there is a “clear risk” that parts for lethal fighter jets might be used by Israel to violate international humanitarian law but continues to export them anyway, the High Court heard today.
Global Legal Action Network (Glan) and human rights group Al-Haq have brought legal action against the Department for Business and Trade, accusing it of breaking its own rules by continuing exports if there is such a risk.
Between October and May, former business secretary Kemi Badenoch approved over 100 licences to Israel throughout its brutal onslaught on Gaza.
In September, the new Labour government eventually moved to ban just 30 out of 361 licences, excluding components for F-35 jets.
Described by its manufacturer Lockheed Martin as the “most lethal” fighter jet in the world, F-35s have been used extensively in Israel’s bloodshed.
Capable of dropping 2,000lb bombs, they are linked to the murder of 90 people in the al-Mawasi “safe zone” in July.
There are 79 companies registered in Britain that hold licences to export parts for the jet.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAGenocide denying UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy says that UK is suspending 30 of 350 arms licences to Israel. He also confirms the UK government’s support for Israel’s Gaza genocide and the UK government and military’s active participation in genocide.Vote For Genocide Vote Labour.