Reform Party leader Nigel Farage celebrates his party candidate Sarah Pochin winning the Runcorn and Helsby byelection by six votes Photograph: Anthony Devlin/Getty Images
The head of the UK’s biggest union has urged staff at Reform UK-controlled councils to sign up after Nigel Farage warned workers to seek “alternative careers”.
Farage said during a speech on Friday that he would advise council staff working on diversity or climate change initiatives to seek “alternative careers very, very quickly” after Reform UK took control of Durham county council.
The Clacton MP’s party made major gains in Thursday’s local elections, picking up 10 councils and more than 600 seats. The party also won two mayoral races and secured a fifth MP in Runcorn and Helsby with Sarah Pochin.
Responding to Farage’s comments, Unison general secretary Christina McAnea said: “Unions are there to ensure no one can play fast and loose with the law.
“Any staff working for councils now controlled by Reform, and who aren’t yet members, should sign up so they can be protected too.”
Farage has said he wants a British equivalent of Doge – referring to the Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency”, which is slashing government spending in the US, in every council.
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Keir Starmer visiting the defence contractor Leonardo in Luton, 2 May 2025. Photograph: Henry Nicholls/PA
The local elections showed that voters feel betrayed. But in a party that brooks no dissent, that message isn’t getting through
The response from Labour spokespeople so far to the loss of Runcorn and Helsby – and to the election results as a whole – has been especially tin-eared. There doesn’t seem to be any understanding of the deep-seated emotion in the reaction of Labour supporters to the party’s behaviour in government over the past 10 months. There used to be talk of the need for emotional literacy in politics. What we are witnessing is a staggering level of emotional illiteracy.
Labour supporters feel deeply that their party has turned its back on them. It’s not just that they feel they are not being listened to. It’s that the Starmer and Reeves government is doing things that they believe no Labour government should ever do.
After 14 years of enduring year after year of austerity under the Conservatives, there was such a collective sigh of relief in getting rid of the incompetent, corrupt and brutal Tories. There might not have been much in the way of inspiring politics from Keir Starmer in the run-up to the election last July, but at least we had a Labour government.
The problem now is that, at times, the government is unrecognisable as a Labour government. This isn’t the traditional argument about whether the Starmer administration is behaving like old Labour or New Labour. It’s whether it’s Labour at all in the eyes of people who have supported us or would want to support us.
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Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and actor Ross Kemp join the national phone bank at the Labour Party headquarters in central London, during campaigning for tomorrow’s local elections, April 30, 2025
LABOUR MPs, trade unions and campaigners called on the government to urgently change course today after Reform UK overturned the party’s majority of 15,000 to win the Runcorn and Helsby by-election by six votes for its candidate, former Conservative councillor Sarah Pochin.
Thursday’s local elections saw the far-right party also take their first mayoralty in Greater Lincolnshire for ex-Tory MP and minister Andrea Jenkyns, and come close seconds to Labour in three other mayoral races, as well as taking hundreds of council seats from the Tories and winning control of many councils.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer responded to the losses by saying ”I get it,” and pledged to go ”further and faster” in changing Britain.
But veteran Labour MP Diane Abbott said: ”Labour leadership is saying the party will go further and faster — in the same direction.
”They don’t seem to understand: it is our current direction that is the problem.”
Former shadow chancellor John McDonnell MP said: ”The message to ministers is: drop plans to attack disabled people.”
And Labour MP for Leeds East Richard Burgon said that Labour’s defeat in Runcorn was ”entirely avoidable” and a ”direct result of the party leadership’s political choices.”
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Green Party Co-leader Adrian Ramsay. Wikipedia CC.
Responding to Nigel Farage’s comments on Radio 4’s Today Programme where he refused to accept that carbon emissions are leading to climate change, Green Party Co-Leader Adrian Ramsey, MP, hit back saying:
This morning’s performance suggested he hasn’t got the slightest grasp of even the most basic climate science. But I think it’s worse than that. He understands all too well human-made climate change, but he is willing to pretend he doesn’t and stand in the way of climate action for his party’s populist agenda.
If he really does believe what he says, let’s see if his ridiculous rhetoric stands up to actual scrutiny – let’s see if he is prepared to take part in an hour-long TV debate about climate change and the challenge of reaching net zero?”
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Reform UK leader Nigel Farage and Reform UK treasurer Nick Candy in front of an oil extraction site. DeSmog collage. Credit: GB News / YouTube / Damien Goodyear / SOPA Images / Alamy
Nigel Farage’s Reform UK is attempting to raise money from the fossil fuel industry, the Financial Times has revealed.
The newspaper reports that Reform UK treasurer Nick Candy – a billionaire property developer – has been launching a drive to raise funds from wealthy offshore donors in low-tax jurisdictions including Monaco, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Switzerland. Expatriates registered to vote in the UK can donate to UK political parties, as can foreign individuals with a business in the country.
Part of this drive has involved soliciting donations from oil and gas executives. Candy told the Financial Times that an energy executive had donated £100,000 to the party last week, and pledged to give up to £1 million. Candy added that Reform was targeting oil and gas donors who are “very disillusioned” with current UK government policies.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer yesterday said: “homegrown clean energy is in the DNA of my government”, as he pledged to accelerate the transition from fossil fuels to renewables. While the UK’s oil and gas reserves are dwindling, the country’s green economy grew by 10 percent in 2024.
By contrast, Reform advocates for clean energy policies to be scrapped, including cancelling the UK’s commitment to achieving net zero emissions by 2050.
“This is textbook Nigel Farage,” said Ami McCarthy, head of politics at Greenpeace UK. “While he may enjoy cosplaying as a ‘man of the people’, in reality, Reform’s agenda is a shopping list of policies that will turbo-drive the profits of the very richest.
“Taking money from fossil fuel execs whilst pushing their misinformation will keep families tied to volatile oil and gas with sky-high energy bills, and further climate breakdown for our children and grandchildren.
“By going cap in hand to fossil fuel firms and millionaires in offshore tax havens, Farage is making it very clear who he’s working for: his elite mates, not us.”
Reform UK and its senior figures have repeatedly questioned basic climate science. Speaking at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference in February, while admitting that he knew little about climate science, Farage claimed it was “absolutely nuts” that CO2 is considered to be a pollutant. He also suggested on the BBC’s Today programme this week that climate change may not be caused by humans.
Farage’s deputy Richard Tice, who has donated substantial sums to the party in recent years, has claimed that “CO2 is not poison; it’s plant food”.
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 pollution “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.”
As revealed by DeSmog, Reform received at least £2.3 million from fossil fuel interests, polluters and climate deniers prior to the 2024 general election campaign – equivalent to 92 percent of its funding during the period.
“This is further evidence that Reform is copying Donald Trump and pretending that climate change does not exist,” said Bob Ward, Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics. “But the reality of making the UK more dependent on fossil fuels is that we would be more at the mercy of international markets and so would have energy that is more insecure, more unaffordable and more unsustainable.”
Reform UK treasurer Nick Candy has been attempting to extract cash from fossil fuel executives.
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Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and actor Ross Kemp join the national phone bank at the Labour Party headquarters in central London, during campaigning for tomorrow’s local elections, April 30, 2025
