… on a quiet day, I can hear her breathing

Category: Nigel Farage

  • Conservatives Have Taken £7.2 Million from Climate Denial Group Funders and Directors

    Spread the love

    Original article by Andrew Kersley republished from DeSmog.

    Major Tory donor Lord Michael Hintze, one of the few known funders of the Global Warming Policy Foundation. Credit: Sir Michael Hintze (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

    Funders and directors of the UK’s leading climate science denial group have donated more than £7 million to the Conservative Party over the past two decades, DeSmog can reveal.

    The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) was founded by Margaret Thatcher’s former Chancellor Nigel Lawson in 2009 in order to combat what it describes as “extremely damaging and harmful policies” designed to mitigate climate change. 

    Its current director Benny Peiser has claimed it is “extraordinary that anyone should think there is a climate crisis” and the group suggested in a 2015 report that carbon dioxide pollution is “a benefit to the planet”. 

    In reality, the world’s foremost climate science body, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has 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”.

    The GWPF doesn’t publish a full list of its donors, but several have been outed over the years, while its directors – which include former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott and Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson – are publicly declared.

    Electoral Commission records show that these individuals have donated more than £7.4 million to right-wing political parties in just over two decades, including £7.2 million to the Conservatives, and £230,000 to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK. Almost half a million pounds of those donations were made in the last year.

    The single biggest donor on the list was asset manager billionaire Lord Michael Hintze, who has donated over £5.2 million to the Conservative Party since 2002, including £257,400 in the last year.

    Lord Hintze was revealed as one of the GWPF’s financial backers in 2012 by The Guardian, while DeSmog revealed in early September that he is one of the main donors in the ongoing Conservative leadership race, donating £10,000 each to James Cleverly, Tom Tugendhat, and Priti Patel.

    Lord Hintze has previously said he believes “there is climate change” caused “in part due to human activity” but that he wants to ensure “all sides” are heard on climate change “to reach the right conclusion for society as a whole”.

    More than 99.9 percent of peer-reviewed scientific papers agree that climate change is mainly caused by humans.

    Lord Hintze isn’t the only figure linked to the GWPF currently bankrolling the Conservative Party leadership contest.

    One of the race’s frontrunners – Kemi Badenoch – received £10,000 from Neil Record, the chair of Net Zero Watch, which is the campaigning arm of the GWPF. In total, Record has donated over £510,000 to the Conservative Party and its MPs since 2008, and has also given money to the GWPF.  

    As recently as July, Record wrote a column for The Telegraph claiming it was “debatable in detail” if fossil fuels cause dangerous levels of global warming. Net Zero Watch has called for “rapid” new North Sea oil and gas exploration, and for wind and solar power to be “wound down completely”. 

    Authors working for the 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”.

    During the leadership contest, Badenoch has questioned the decision made in 2019 by Theresa May’s Conservative government to introduce the UK’s 2050 net zero target. 

    When asked previously about his GWPF donations, Record said: “I personally regard the continuing contribution of the GWPF to the climate change debate as very positive in assisting balance and rationality in this contentious area.”

    The Tories have also received £620,000 since 2001 from Lord Jon Moynihan, another GWPF donor. As revealed by Democracy for Sale, Conservative peer Lord Moynihan donated £25,000 to the GWPF between 2018 to 2023. The peer also has fossil fuel interests, holding shares in oil and gas majors BP, Shell, and TotalEnergies each worth more than £100,000.

    Between the 2019 general election and the start of the 2024 campaign, the Conservatives received £8.4 million from fossil fuel interests, highly polluting industries, and climate science deniers.

    Prior to its defeat at the 2024 election, the Conservative Party made a series of U-turns on its own net zero policies, attacked Labour’s green spending plans, and doubled down on its support for new fossil fuel projects, approving more than 100 new North Sea oil and gas licences.

    The party gathers in Birmingham this weekend for its annual conference, which will act as a post mortem for the party’s worst general election defeat in its history on 4 July. 

    “There is no doubt that public mistrust of politics is fuelled by parties accepting major donations from big companies like those whose lobbying efforts make it clear they want to frustrate the urgent need to tackle the climate crisis,” Green Party deputy leader Zack Polanski told DeSmog. 

    “It’s time to implement strict rules on funding political parties, including a cap on how much any individual or business can donate.

    “Elections should be won by the people with the best ideas, not the parties influenced by the biggest donors.”

    Reform UK

    The Conservative Party has not been the only right-wing party to benefit from funding from those with ties to the GWPF.

    Terence Mordaunt has been a prolific political donor to right-wing parties – giving £412,000 to the Conservatives and £230,000 to Reform since January 2023.

    He was the chair of the GWPF between 2019 and 2021, sitting on its board until August this year, and told the investigative news site openDemocracy in 2019 that “no one has proved yet that CO2 is the culprit (of climate change). It may not be.”

    The GWPF’s replacement for Mordaunt as chair, Jerome Booth, has also donated £50,000 to the Tories between 2007 and 2013.

    Reform, which campaigns to scrap the UK’s net zero targets, has extensive ties to climate science deniers and those with financial interests in oil and gas. 

    Between the 2019 general election and the start of the 2024 campaign, the party received £2.3 million from fossil fuel interests, major polluters, and those who cast doubt on the climate crisis.

    On 13 September, party leader Nigel Farage headlined a fundraiser in Chicago, Illinois, for the Heartland Institute – a group that has been at the forefront of denying the scientific evidence for man-made climate change – and urged the U.S. to “drill baby drill” for more fossil fuels.

    The IPCC has warned that “keeping warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels requires deep, rapid and sustained greenhouse gas emissions reductions across all sectors”, led by the energy industry. The group has also stated that “climate change impacts will put a disproportionate burden on low-income households and thus increase poverty levels.”

    All of the donors named in this piece, the Reform Party, Conservative Party and the GWPF were contacted for comment, but none replied.

    Original article by Andrew Kersley republished from DeSmog.

  • Zarah Sultana: The enemy of the working class travels by private jet, not migrant dinghy

    Spread the love

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/aug/09/enemy-working-class-far-right

    …

    The fuse may have been set alight by online disinformation and secretive social media channels, but this explosion of far-right violence has been decades in the making. And while Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (AKA Tommy Robinson) and his mob of far-right agitators are its immediate instigators, much of Britain’s political and media class is complicit in laying the groundwork for this eruption of hate.

    This truth of how we reached this point flips the normal classist narrative about racism in Britain. The reality is that racism isn’t a bottom-up expression of popular discontent, but a top-down project propagated by people in positions of power.

    Just think about how the billionaire-owned rightwing press drip-feeds hate into British politics, splashing fearmongering headlines across their papers: “Islamist plotters in schools across the UK” – the Telegraph; “1 in 5 Brit Muslims’ sympathy for jihadis” – the Sun; “Migrants spark housing crisis” – the Daily Mail.

    Or think how Conservative politicians normalise far-right rhetoric, dehumanising people and spreading hate. From “one nation” Conservatives such as David Cameron who as prime minister described migrants as a “swarm”, to the likes of Suella Braverman who as home secretary said there was a migrant “invasion”. Rishi Sunak’s “Stop the boats” slogan is now a far-right chant and just this week the Tory party leadership hopeful Robert Jenrick said the police should “immediately arrest” people shouting “Allahu Akbar” on the street, the Arabic phrase meaning “God is great” – the equivalent of a Christian saying “hallelujah”.

    This rhetoric was propagated further by the privately educated, former City trader Nigel Farage, who claims to be a man of the people. In the general election campaign, he said many Muslims didn’t share “British values” and this week promoted the “two-tier policing” conspiracy.

    But it’s not just rightwing politicians, pundits and publications at fault. So-called centrists too often refuse to push back against this hate as well, sometimes peddling the same dangerous tropes or dismissing the concerns of those subject to this hatred.

    I was confronted by this painful reality just this week. On Monday morning I was invited on to ITV’s Good Morning Britain to talk about the recent racist riots, only to be interrogated – and it did feel like an interrogation – about why I, a Muslim MP, thought it was important to call the recent racist violence Islamophobic. “Why is it important to use that specific word?” Kate Garraway repeatedly questioned me.

    Almost before I could answer, and behaving with the same sneering condescension he did throughout the segment, the former Labour shadow chancellor and now broadcaster Ed Balls repeatedly interrupted me, seemingly incredulous that I thought this hate should be called by its proper name. The show has now been hit with more than 8,200 Ofcom complaints about that morning’s episode, many of them about his handling of my interview.

    This wasn’t a one-off, even for Ed Balls. In the summer of 2010, as he set out his Labour leadership pitch in the Guardian, Balls blamed “eastern European migrants” for a “direct impact on the wages, terms and conditions of too many people”. He’s far from the only Labour figure to echo rightwing talking points: from then leader of the House of Commons Jack Straw, who in 2006 said that he asked veiled Muslim women to remove their veils in meetings with him, to the former Labour MP Jonathan Ashworth recently claiming asylum seekers can stay in hotels for “the rest of their lives”.

    …

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/aug/09/enemy-working-class-far-right

  • UK Labour MP Says Right-Wing Politicians, Media Fueled Xenophobic Mob Attacks

    Spread the love

    Original article by JULIA CONLEY republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Ed Balls was previously a Labour Party MP.

    People clean up debris outside a Holiday Inn Express whose walls bear graffiti reading “Get Out England” and a racial epithet on August 5, 2024 in Tamworth, England.

    “There are politicians and there are journalists who have played an active role in fanning the flames of hate and division, and we are seeing that play out,” said Zarah Sultana.

    As British Prime Minister Keir Starmer covened an emergency security meeting on Monday to respond to violent attacks on immigrant and Muslim communities that have spread across the United Kingdom in recent days, progressive MP Zarah Sultana said the crisis—fueled by rampant disinformation and xenophobia—must serve as a reckoning for politicians and journalists who have “fanned the flames” of hatred for years.

    Sultana, who represents Coventry South in the House of Commons, appeared on ITV’s “Good Morning Britain” to discuss the violent riots that have taken place in at least a dozen cities across the U.K. in recent days, mostly in England, with far-right protesters attacking mosques, libraries, and a hotel housing asylum-seekers.

    The attacks have been in response to disinformation that has pinned the blame for a deadly stabbing attack on a children’s dance class in Southport, England last week on undocumented immigrants. The suspect was born and raised in the U.K., according to police.

    “Rather than saying, this is the result of political decisions made by consecutive governments, people have blamed and scapegoated minorities.”

    Sultana said that the violent attacks in cities including Blackpool, Leeds, and Manchester “shouldn’t be a surprise,” considering the years the British government—led for 14 years by the Conservative Party until the Labour Party won last month’s elections—has spent pushing anti-immigration policies and demonizing asylum-seekers, with the help of national news outlets.

    “There is decades of work by the right-wing press and by politicians who have fanned the flames of this hate,” said Sultana in a panel discussion that also included journalists from The Daily Mail. “When we look at the role that media outlets like GB News has played, that The Daily Mail has played… There are politicians and there are journalists who have played an active role in fanning the flames of hate and division, and we are seeing that play out.”

    Andrew Pierce of The Daily Mail took issue with Sultana’s remarks, demanding that she provide examples of anti-Muslim news stories in the paper.

    The lawmaker did so after the broadcast, posting an image of 16 front pages from the outlet, including ones that asked “how many more” migrants the U.K. can take, referred to asylum-seekers as “illegals,” and claimed that migrants are taking the majority of jobs in the U.K. and sparking a “housing crisis.”

    Sultana added that former Home Secretary Suella Braverman referred to refugees arriving in the U.K. as an “invasion” and far-right Reform UK leader Nigel Farage said in May that British Muslims do not share “British values.”

    “So when we look at the complicity,” said Sultana, “there’s a lot of mirrors that people have to be looking into.”

    Sultana also implored politicians and the British media to explicitly refer to the riots over the weekend as Islamophobic, noting that Prime Minister Keir Starmer and others have denounced the attacks as racist but have not clearly expressed solidarity with the Muslim communities that have been targeted.

    “Naming it as Islamophobia is really important because that allows us to shape our response,” said Sultana. “If we’re not identifying what is happening, the language that is being used and what this is about, we’re not going to be able to address this fundamentally.”

    “Why is there such controversy around calling it Islamophobia?” asked Sultana after “Good Morning Britain” host Ed Balls dismissed her concerns, displaying what the lawmaker called “sneering contempt.”

    The interview took place a week after three children were killed and 10 were injured in a knife attack in Southport. The 17-year-old suspect, Axel Rudakubana, was born and raised in Britain, according to authorities, who took the unusual step of making his identity public to counter disinformation that quickly spread online and fueled riots that first began in Southport the day after the crime.

    The first riot included anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant demonstrators throwing bricks at a mosque in the town, setting cars on fire, and damaging a convenience store.

    The authorities’ decision to disclose the suspect’s identity did not stop the violence from escalating over the weekend, with rioters setting a library on fire in Liverpool, burning books, and attempting to block firefighters from putting out the flames on Saturday.

    In Rotherham, an anti-immigration mob broke into a hotel housing asylum-seekers and attempted to set the building on fire while blocking exits.

    Nearly 150 people were arrested for taking part in the attacks, and Starmer warned Sunday that “those who have participated in this violence will face the full force of the law.”

    “This is not protest. It is organized, violent thuggery,” said Starmer.

    BJ Harrington, the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for public order, said in a statement Sunday that “disinformation is a huge driver of this appalling violence and we know a lot of those attending these so-called protests are doing so in direct response to what they’ve read online.”

    “Often posts are being shared and amplified by high profile accounts. We’re working hard to counteract this,” added Harrington. “They won’t win.”

    While calling on the government and media to directly confront the Islamophobia that has been fomented in the U.K. in recent decades, Sultana said the new Labour government should also correct the austerity policies that have caused unrest and scapegoating of immigrants and Muslim communities.

    “The economic system which has allowed inequality to exacerbate in this country, has brought down living standards,” said Sultana. “Our communities have faced the brunt of Tory austerity, and what has happened on the right-wing side of politics, in the media and in politics, is that migrants, Muslims, and trans people have been blamed for people not being able to access council housing, not being able to get [National Health Service] appointments, not being able to find school places for their kids. Rather than saying, this is the result of political decisions made by consecutive governments, people have blamed and scapegoated minorities.”

    Original article by JULIA CONLEY republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Ed Balls was previously a Labour Party MP.

  • George Monbiot exposes Starmer’s hollow victory

    Spread the love
    Rupert Murdoch supports the Red Tories (UK Labour Party) and needs his nappy changed.
    Rupert Murdoch supports the Red Tories (UK Labour Party) and needs his nappy changed.
    Zionist Keir Starmer is quoted "I support Zionism without qualification." He's asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.
    Zionist Keir Starmer is quoted “I support Zionism without qualification.” He’s asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.

  • Two Thirds of Anti-Net Zero Tories Wiped Out in UK Election

    Spread the love

    Original article by Adam Barnett and Joey Grostern republished from DeSmog.

    From left to right, outgoing net zero sceptic MPs Steve Baker, Miriam Cates, Liz Truss, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Andrea Jenkyns and Philip Davies. Credit: Official House of Commons portraits. Design: Adam Barnett

    The result has “buried Sunak’s anti-green agenda once and for all”, said Will McCallum of Greenpeace UK.

    Labour’s landslide victory over the Conservatives has left the party’s anti-net zero wing in tatters. 

    DeSmog’s analysis of Westminster’s influential Net Zero Scrutiny Group (NZSG) found that two thirds of its supporters are no longer represented in parliament following the July 4 general election.

    Twenty-four of the 37 MPs supportive of the backbench grouping were voted out – a loss of 65 percent of its backers. Outgoing supporters include former energy secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg, former NZSG co-chair Steve Baker, and Net Zero Watch board member Andrea Jenkyns. 

    A further five stood down or resigned before the election, among them veteran climate crisis John Redwood.

    The group’s former chair Craig Mackinlay, who contracted sepsis in September, has been appointed to the House of Lords by outgoing prime minister Rishi Sunak. Mackinlay has said he would use this platform to campaign for “sensible net zero”. 

    The NZSG has actively campaigned against climate action since it was formed in 2021. The group’s joint letters to the Telegraph made front page news, as supporters urged the government to scrap “environmental levies on domestic energy”, “expand North Sea exploration” for oil and gas, and support “shale gas extraction” by lifting the ban on fracking. 

    In addition to the NZSG grouping, former Prime Minister Liz Truss, who has become an outspoken critic of net zero since leaving Downing Street in 2022, was voted out on Thursday. 

    Campaigners have welcomed the departure of MPs opposed to climate action. “This landslide election victory has buried Sunak’s anti-green agenda once and for all along with many of its principle architects”, Will McCallum, co-executive director at Greenpeace UK, told DeSmog. 

    “Most of the former MPs who sought to sow division and disinformation about net zero have lost at the ballot box.”

    Meanwhile, 14 anti-net zero MPs were re-elected, including Labour MP Graham Stringer, who is on the board of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), the UK’s main climate denial group, and Lee Anderson, who defected from the Tories to Reform UK earlier this year.  

    Four new Reform MPs were also elected, including party leader Nigel Farage and chairman Richard Tice, both of whom have a record of climate science denial. 

    Despite this, campaigners are still positive. McCallum added that “the biggest winners [in the election] – Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party – contested this election on strong green policies that will slash emissions, lower bills and deliver hundreds of thousands of new jobs”. 

    “There is and has long been a public consensus on climate action in this country”, he said, and “the new government should feel empowered to be bold”. 

    Here are some of the most prominent critics of net zero who have lost their seats: 

    Jacob Rees-Mogg

    Jacob Rees-Mogg, who lost his North East Somerset seat by more than 6,000 votes to Labour’s Dan Norris, was secretary of state for business, energy and industrial strategy under Liz Truss between September and October 2022. 

    While in office he reportedly argued for lifting the ban on fracking for shale gas, and told the head of the UAE’s state investment company, in a private meeting revealed by DeSmog, that people need to “stop demonising oil and gas”. 

    Since January 2023, Rees-Mogg has presented his own show on GB News, which regularly broadcasts climate science denial. Rees-Mogg has been a harsh critic of the government’s net zero policies, stating that “the current headlong rush to net zero risks impoverishing the nation to no global benefit on emissions”.

    Steve [“Number two”] Baker

    Steve Baker has led the charge against climate policies in parliament. Baker was a trustee of the UK’s main climate denial group, the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), from May 2021 to September 2022, when he stepped down to serve as Northern Ireland minister. He was co-chair of the NZSG, which operated as the GWPF’s caucus in parliament.  

    At a 2021 Conservative Party conference event, Baker said that much climate science is “contestable” and “sometimes propagandised”, while claiming that some UN climate scenarios were “implausible”.

    In February 2022, Baker received £5,000, and a further £10,000 in February 2023, from Neil Record, chair of Net Zero Watch, the campaign arm of the GWPF. 

    On Thursday Baker lost his Wycombe seat to Labour’s Emma Reynolds by more than 4,000 votes. 

    Dame Andrea Jenkyns 

    Andrea Jenkyns, who lost her seat of Leeds and South West Morley by more than 7,000 votes to Labour’s Mark Sewards, sits on the board of Net Zero Watch, the campaign arm of the GWPF, the UK’s main climate science denial group. 

    In March 2023 Jenkyns told parliament: “Personally, net zero, I think we need to ditch these targets, especially at the moment, and use whatever resources we’ve got under our feet.” She has described herself on Twitter as holding “no-to-net-zero views”.

    Miriam Cates

    Miriam Cates lost her Penistone and Stocksbridge seat by more than 9,000 votes to Labour’s Marie Tidball in Thursday’s general election. 

    Cates was tipped as a rising star of the Conservative party, a “darling” of the Tory right. She is the co-chair of the New Conservatives, a socially conservative faction of the Tory party which received £50,000 in January from GB News investors the Legatum Group.

    Cates also sits on the advisory board of the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC), a right-wing group fronted by prominent climate denier Jordan Peterson. 

    Speaking at the National Conservatism Conference in London last year, Cates suggested that “epidemic levels of anxiety and confusion” are being caused by teaching children that “humanity is killing the Earth”. 

    Philip Davies  

    Philip Davies, who lost his Shipley seat by more than 8,000 votes to Labour’s Anna Dixon, has a long record of opposing climate policies. Davies was one of only five MPs to vote against the UK’s Climate Change Act in 2008. 

    He currently works as a presenter for GB News, as does his wife and fellow Conservative politician Esther McVey, who was re-elected on Thursday. 

    Liz Truss

    A number of net zero sceptic MPs existed outside the NZSG grouping, among them former prime minister Liz Truss, who resigned in October 2022 after just 49 days in the job. As well as appointing Rees-Mogg energy secretary, Truss overturned the UK’s moratorium on fracking for shale gas – a key demand from the Net Zero Scrutiny Group.

    Since leaving Downing Street – and in between giving paid speeches to U.S. anti-climate groups like CPAC and the Heritage Foundation – Truss has become an open opponent of net zero policies. 

    In her 2024 book “Ten Years to Save the West”, Truss called for the independent Climate Change Committee to be abolished, and attacked the UN COP process, which coordinates international action on climate change. Truss also claimed that while in cabinet she argued against the UK hosting the COP26 climate summit.

    On Thursday, Truss lost her South West Norfolk seat by 630 votes to Labour’s Terry Jermy.

    ‘Watching Closely’

    “It’s obviously fantastic news that 30 Tory MPs who’ve lobbied against climate policies are no longer in parliament”, said Jessica Townsend, founder of the MP Watch campaign group, which used DeSmog research in a recent event on “top ten climate denial MPs”.

    Townsend noted that seven of the campaign’s list have won seats, including Reform’s Farage and GWPF director Graham Stringer.

    “MP Watch will be watching these MPs closely in coming months as well as the influence fossil fuel companies and their think tanks may have on Labour in Westminster now that the power base has shifted,” she added.

    Original article by Adam Barnett and Joey Grostern republished from DeSmog.

    What does it mean to be a climate denier?