In recent days and weeks Truss has also claimed that the system is rigged against Conservative policies
Former Prime Minister Liz Truss, whose premiership ended in disaster, has announced that she is willing to work with Nigel Farage in order to change the Conservative Party and the country.
Truss, who was booted out of office after just 49 days after her disastrous policies resulted in financial turmoil, has recently being trying to relaunch her political career with the launch of her Popular Conservatism group, also known as PopCon.
The group describes itself as a “new movement aiming to restore democratic accountability to Britain and deliver popular conservative policies.” Its supporters include right wing Tory MPs such as Jacob Rees-Mogg and Lee Anderson.
In recent days and weeks Truss has also claimed that the system is rigged against Conservative policies as she sought to blame a deep state conspiracy behind her downfall.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, Lee Anderson and Liz Truss at the launch of ‘Popular Conservatism’. Credit: PA Images / Alamy
The launch of Popular Conservatism saw attacks on “net zero zealots” and the Climate Change Committee.
Liz Truss’s new ‘Popular Conservatism’ faction of the Conservative Party launched today with attacks on net zero targets and environmental bodies, using the playbook established by libertarian lobby groups.
The self-styled PopCons included politicians critical of climate policies and science, including Lord Frost, who is a director of the climate science denial Global Warming Policy Foundation, as well as Conservative MP Lee Anderson and Reform party president Nigel Farage.
PopCon director Mark Littlewood is the outgoing managing director of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), an influential free market think tank that has talked up its access to government.
The IEA received funding from oil company BP every year from 1967 to 2018, according to an Unearthed investigation confirmed by the IEA. Both IEA and BP have declined to say if this funding continues, when asked by DeSmog.
A branded leaflet handed out at the event, under the heading “what we stand for”, stated: “End net zero zealotry and promote energy pragmatism to provide both security of supply and low prices”.
The leaflet also named the Climate Change Committee (CCC), the government’s independent advisory body on hitting its climate targets, as one of the institutions which “stand in the way of meaningful reform”.
Littlewood’s speech criticised the UK’s net zero target, complaining about “the Climate Change Committee, pronouncing on our progress to the eye-wateringly [sic] expensive and almost certainly unachievable aim of being carbon net zero”.
Lee Anderson, former deputy chair of the Conservative Party, repeatedly attacked net zero in his speech, which he claimed “never comes up on the doorstep” aside from when it is brought up by “the odd weirdo”.
Anderson said: “if we became net zero tomorrow, this country… it wouldn’t make a blind bit of difference to the earth’s atmosphere”, pointing to the higher emissions produced by other countries.
Anderson argued that net zero would cost voters money, calling for an “opt-in, opt-out” approach to what he called “green levies” on energy bills, adding: “Not one politician can put their hand on their hearts and tell you how much it’s [net zero] going to cost.”
The CCC has estimated the cost of net zero at less than one percent of GDP, while the Office for Budget Responsibility has said that “the costs of failing to get climate change under control would be much larger than those of bringing emissions down to net zero”.
Liz Truss used her speech to say: “If we look at the net zero zealots that Lee has just been talking about, the need for cheaper energy is being drowned out by some very active campaigners.” She claimed voters “don’t like the net zero policies which are making energy more expensive”.
The International Monetary Fund found in September 2022 that the energy crisis was hitting UK households harder than any country in western Europe, due to the UK’s reliance on gas for heating homes.
Tufton Street Links
Politicians fronting the PopCon group have a history of working with anti-green think tanks and supporting more fossil fuel extraction.
Truss (who went to the University of Oxford with Littlewood) has extensive ties to the IEA, which is part of the Tufton Street network – a cluster of libertarian pressure groups and think tanks that oppose state-led climate action.
In 2022, Truss’s campaign for Tory leader was run by Ruth Porter, a former communications director at the IEA. Once in 10 Downing Street, Truss hired Porter as her senior special advisor, and has since appointed her to the House of Lords. A number of former Tufton Street figures were appointed to government advisory roles during Truss’s short-lived tenure in Downing Street.
The IEA publicly supported Truss’s ‘mini-budget’, which caused economic chaos by promising large tax cuts without explaining how they would be funded. While in office, Truss lifted the UK’s ban on fracking for shale gas, a policy advocated by the IEA. (The policy was ditched by her successor Rishi Sunak.)
The IEA has consistently opposed UK government climate policies, preferring “market solutions”. In October 2022, IEA executive Andy Mayer said the government should “get rid of” its net zero target, which he called a “very hard left, socialist, central-planning model”.
During her 2022 leadership campaign, Truss received £5,000 from Lord Vinson, one of the few known funders of the Tufton Street-based Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), the UK’s main climate science denial group.
Rees-Mogg also has a long record of opposing climate policies. Earlier this month he said: “the current headlong rush to net zero risks impoverishing the nation to no global benefit on emissions”.
The UK government’s legally-binding target to cut carbon dioxide emissions to net zero by 2050 is part of international efforts to keep global warming below 1.5C.
As Business and Energy Secretary in 2022, Rees-Mogg supported overturning the UK’s ban on fracking, and said “we have to stop demonising oil and gas” in a meeting with the UAE’s state investment company.
He also receives around £29,000 per month to host a show on right-wing broadcaster GB News. A DeSmog investigation last year found one in three GB News hosts spread climate science denial on air in 2022, while more than half attacked net zero policies. The channel‘s co-owner, Paul Marshall, has £1.8 billion invested in fossil fuels via his investment fund Marshall Wace.
Science Denial
Several figures with ties to climate science denial turned out for the PopCon launch. They included Lord Frost, a trustee of the GWPF who last year said global warming could be “beneficial”, along with Dame Andrea Jenkyns, who sits on the board of the GWPF’s campaign arm, Net Zero Watch.
The IEA and GWPF have both received funding from Neil Record, a Conservative donor who was IEA chairman until July 2023 and remains chair of Net Zero Watch. Record has donated thousands to Tory MP Steve Baker, an IEA ally and former GWPF trustee who has claimed much climate science is “contestable” and “propagandised”.
The PopCon launch was also attended by GB News host Nigel Farage, honorary president of right-wing party Reform UK, which campaigns to “scrap net zero”. Last year the party received £135,000 from donors who spread climate denial or had fossil fuel interests. Reform leader Richard Tice has claimed that “CO2 isn’t poison; it’s plant food”.
Farage posed for a photo at the PopCon event with Lois Perry, director of climate denial group CAR26, who is running for leader of UKIP and last month said she does not believe in human-caused climate change.
Addressing the audience Truss made a series of bizarre attacks on the Left, taking aim at “wokeism” and said the Tories had failed to “take on the left-wing extremists”.
“Wokeism seems to be on the curriculum,” said Truss. “There is confusion about basic biological facts, like what is a woman.
“Look at the net zero zealots, if you listen to the Today programme, I don’t recommend it, you’ll hear demands for more public spending.”
Truss went on to warn that the left were “on the march and actively organising”.
“These people have repurposed themselves, they don’t believe they are socialist or communists anymore. They say they’re environmentalists, they say they’re in favour of helping people across all communities, they are in favour of supporting LGBT people or groups of ethnic minorities.
“So they no longer admit that they are collectivists but that is what their ideology is about.”
She went on to claim that anti-capitalists were being “pandered to” by the Government and that Conservative values were being eroded and said it was “only through Conservative values that we can give the British people what they want”, however fell short on saying what this was exactly.
Former prime minister Liz Truss during the launch of the Popular Conservatism movement at the Emmanuel Centre in central London, in a bid to rally right-wing Tory MPs ahead of a general election this year, February 6, 2024
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Running through a list of enemies almost longer than her catastrophic time in Downing Street, Ms Truss nevertheless claimed that Britain was “full of secret Conservatives — people who agree with us but don’t want to admit it,” while the Tory party had been appeasing “left-wing extremists.”
Painting a picture of a world on the edge of socialism, the former prime minister, best known for crashing the economy in a matter of days, asserted that “the left have been on the march.”
“They have been on the march in our institutions, they have been on the march in our corporate world, they are on the march globally,” she claimed.
Taking on this menace and “changing the system itself” will require “resilience and bravery,” Ms Truss added.
Unfortunately, rather than resilience and bravery, she had to hand only Lee Anderson and Jacob Rees-Mogg, former frontbenchers taking a break from their present gigs on GB News.
As the multimillionaire Reform leader sparked ridicule claiming to represent working people
Founder of Reform UK, Nigel Farage, failed to turn up to his party’s election campaign launch today, as the current leader Richard Tice announced Farage was ‘assessing’ his return to the far-right political party.
Farage has been predicted to make a comeback to Reform in a lead role heading its election campaign. However he was a no-show at the news conference held today ahead of the 2024 election which offered an insight into the party’s plans this year.
Founded as the Brexit Party and renamed Reform UK in 2020, the anti-immigration fringe group currently holds no seats in parliament, and used the conference to launched an attack against ‘Starmergeddon’ and to capitalise on discontent with the Tory Party.
Trumping populist narratives, multi-millionaire Reform leader, Richard Tice, claimed to represent the ‘only party of the working people’. However commentators have said the privately education, asset management executive, property developer may struggle to prove that one.
Tice said Farage was the “master of political timing” as he seemed to beg Farage for his help to “save Britain”- “the more help Nigel is able to give frankly the better”.
In the ‘coming soon’ notice announcing this article I said that “[t]here aren’t any real climate deniers anymore”. I was mistaken and there are a very few people like Jeremy Corbyn’s brother Piers Corbyn. I’ve only met and spoken with him once but I’m satisfied that he’s genuine in his beliefs despite them being misguided. He and others like him have the right to believe whatever they like and he’s harmless enough – while he may persuade a few people the vast majority will understand that he’s mistaken and wrong.
Image of UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak reads 1% RICHEST 100% CLIMATE DENIER
So apart from Piers Corbyn and a few similar people, there is no such thing as a climate denier nowadays. The Capitalists profiting from climate destruction have known for 60 years of more that they were profiting from destroying the planet and were forcing future generations to endure intolerable climate conditions, annihilating many thousands of species of plants and animals and generally totally fekking everything.
Governments are controlled, directed, owned by a very few extremely rich and powerful people, the very people that are profiting and maintaining their wealth, power and influence from destroying the planet. According to this perspective we do not exist in a democracy and it is instead a pretence hiding the influence of the rich and powerful. We exist in a plutocracy – we have a wealthy ruling class that politicians serve.
It cannot be accepted that politicians like UK’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak or our expected next Prime Minister Keir Starmer and the like are mistaken true believers like Piers Corbyn believes. Rather they are climate deniers in the sense of the fossil fuel industries – Exxon, Shell and BP – who know fully well that they are destroying the planet but deceive and mislead to continue making a filthy profit. It’s obvious to see that these politician cnuts serve this rich elite’s interests – Tory and Labour UK governments have answered to media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, sucking up to him, grateful to accept his orders.
Image of InBedWithBigOil by Not Here To Be Liked + Hex Prints from Just Stop Oil’s You May Find Yourself… art auction. Featuring Rishi Sunak, Fossil Fuels and Rupert Murdoch.
Sunak, despite being fully aware of the climate crisis is continuing to destroy the planet. Announcing the go-ahead for the Rosebank oil field he said that he intends to get every last drop of North Sea oil.
The anti-woke group, Restore Trust, had launched a renewed campaign to win seats on the Trust’s council this year after failing in their attempts last year, and this time they had the likes of Farage, along with the right-wing press backing them.
An attempt by a right-wing group to take over the National Trust, the UK’s largest charity, has failed after the candidates backed by the likes of Nigel Farage and Jacob Rees-Mogg, failed to secure a place on the National Trust’s council in this year’s elections.
The anti-woke group, Restore Trust, had launched a renewed campaign to win seats on the Trust’s council this year after failing in their attempts last year, and this time they had the likes of Farage, along with the right-wing press backing them.
Why do the National Trust’s elections matter? Because what was at stake was the future not only of the UK’s largest charity but also one which owns more than 1,300 farms, 775 miles of coastline and 250,000 hectares of land, making it Britain’s largest private landowner. The right recognises the importance of an institution like the National Trust, and did all it could in the council elections to help its candidates.
