A Reform UK activist holds up a banner as party leader Nigel Farage visits Denby Lodge in Ripley, Derbyshire, whilst on the local election campaign trail, April 10, 2025
KEMI BADENOCH took the first tentative steps towards agreement with the hard-right Reform party today.
The Tory leader green-lighted local deals by Tory councillors to take control of councils in partnership with Nigel Farage’s supporters.
Ms Badenoch claimed that she still ruled out a national deal with Reform to unite the right-wing, but local pacts will be a clear stepping stone towards some type of agreement.
Most opinion polls now show Reform leading the Tories, and sometimes Labour too.
It is estimated that the split between the two right-wing parties might have handed Labour as many as 100 seats at last year’s general election.
Tory strategists fear that, despite Labour’s polling slump, that outcome could be repeated at the next election in the absence of any deal with Reform.
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”.
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.
The new leader of the opposition has regularly criticised the UK’s green ambitions.
The Conservative Party has elected Kemi Badenoch as its new leader, who describes herself as a “net zero sceptic” and has received funding from the head of a climate science denial campaign.
Badenoch was announced as the winner of the Tory leadership contest on Saturday, beating her rival Robert Jenrick by 56 percent to 44 percent.
The former business and trade secretary campaigned for leader as a straight-talking conservative who would tackle the “woke” left.
But as DeSmog has reported, Badenoch has also repeatedly suggested that the UK’s net zero targets would “bankrupt the country”, has boasted of standing up to “the green lobby” while in government, and has called Labour’s ban on new North Sea oil and gas licences “foolish”.
Badenoch has also received money and office space from Neil Record, the chair of the climate denial group Net Zero Watch (NZW), and produced a leadership manifesto which attacked the “radical environmental policies” previously introduced by the Conservative Party.
Net Zero Sceptic
Making her pitch to Conservative MPs at the party’s annual conference on 2 October, Badenoch described herself as a “net zero sceptic” but “not a climate change sceptic”.
Badenoch said in 2022 that the UK’s 2050 legally-binding target for achieving net zero emissions was “arbitrary” and last year suggested she would support delaying it.
In her Conservative conference speech, Badenoch said that net zero is “making energy more expensive and hurting our economy”, a claim which the International Energy Agency, a leading authority on energy policy, says is false.
Badenoch did not confirm in her speech that she would delay or scrap the UK’s net zero targets but said, “I did not become an MP to deliver an agenda set by Ed Miliband”, who currently serves as the secretary of state for energy security and net zero.
She has repeatedly said that she wants to reduce emissions but not in a way that would “bankrupt” the country.
The Climate Change Committee, which advises the government on its net zero policies, has estimated that the cost of achieving net zero will be less than one percent of UK GDP.
The government independent spending watchdog – the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) – 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”.
Badenoch claimed during the Tory leadership campaign that, while serving as business secretary, she “had to work hard to push back against the green lobby”, and condemned Labour’s “foolish decision to ban new licences for North Sea oil production” as part of its “fanatical approach to net zero”.
As DeSmog revealed, during the leadership contest Badenoch published a 40-page manifesto which cited the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, a U.S. group led by former advisors to Donald Trump, which has likened climate science to believing the earth is flat.
Badenoch used evidence produced by the Committee to Unleash Prosperity to claim that net zero policies are only supported by high-earning graduates living in cities.
Badenoch’s document, titled ‘Conservatism in Crisis: Rise of the Bureaucratic Class’, attacked what it called “radical environmental politics” – such as the ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars introduced by the previous Tory government – and praised fracking, the controversial method adopted in the U.S. to extract more oil and gas.
Scientists at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s foremost climate science body, have said that without “immediate and deep emissions reductions across all sectors” limiting global heating to 1.5C is beyond reach.
Restricting global temperatures to this target, which was agreed as part of the 2015 Paris Agreement, would prevent the worst and most irreversible impacts of climate change.
Climate Denial Ally
In August, DeSmog revealed that Badenoch had received £10,000 towards her leadership campaign from Neil Record, a millionaire Tory donor and chair of Net Zero Watch (NZW), the campaign arm of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, the UK’s principal climate science denial group.
Bloomberg further revealed that Badenoch was running her leadership campaign out of Record’s London home.
NZW has called for “rapid” new North Sea oil and gas exploration, and for wind and solar power to be “wound down completely”.
Record – who is also lifetime president of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), a think tank that received funding from oil giant BP every year from 1967 to at least 2018 – in July wrote that achieving net zero by 2050 “will restrict our freedom, and is likely to be eye-wateringly expensive”. Record has donated to both the IEA and GWPF.
The GWPF has claimed that carbon dioxide has been mischaracterised as pollution, when in fact it is a “benefit to the planet”. The group has been accused of spreading “daft conspiracy yarns” about net zero.
The former business secretary, who is running for Conservative Party leader, has defended net zero U-turns and backed new fossil fuel drilling.
Conservative Party leadership hopeful Kemi Badenoch received £10,000 towards her campaign from the chair of a climate science denial group, DeSmog can reveal.
Based in 55 Tufton Street, Westminster, the GWPF is the UK’s leading climate science denial group. The GWPF’s director Benny Peiser has suggested it would be “extraordinary anyone should think there is a climate crisis”, while the group has also expressed the view that carbon dioxide has been mis-characterised as pollution, when in fact it is a “benefit to the planet”.
Its NZW arm has called for “rapid” new North Sea oil and gas exploration, and for wind and solar power to be “wound down completely”.
Badenoch received £10,000 from Record in July, according to her official register of interests, which said that the donation was “in support of my campaign for the leadership of the Conservative Party”.
The North West Essex MP has previously criticised the UK’s climate targets, calling them “arbitrary” in a 2022 interview. Badenoch has previously suggested that she would be in favour of delaying the UK’s commitment to reach net zero by 2050.
While serving as business secretary in September 2023, Badenoch also defended the decision by then prime minister Rishi Sunak to water down and delay a number of net zero policies, and argued that new fossil fuel licences were compatible with the UK’s climate targets.
“It’s no wonder that the Conservatives don’t want to act on the climate crisis when they are receiving donations from the people running groups like Net Zero Watch,” Adrian Ramsay, co-leader of the Green Party, told DeSmog.
“Just weeks on from the worst electoral defeat in their entire history, you’d hope they would be reflecting on why policies like U-turning on their climate commitments were so unpopular. Instead, it seems they are going to double down on their hostility to net zero and will remain both a threat to the planet and completely out of touch with the British public.”
Polling by More in Common and E3G during the 2024 general election period found that a majority of people in every UK constituency are worried about climate change. Some 61 percent of 2024 Conservative voters said they are worried about climate change, matched by 76 percent of Labour voters, and 65 percent of the country overall.
Last month, which saw world temperatures reach their hottest levels ever measured, Record wrote in The Telegraph that it is “debatable in detail” whether burning fossil fuels increases carbon dioxide (CO2) and causes dangerous global warming.
He went on to claim that achieving net zero by 2050 “will restrict our freedom, and is likely to be eye-wateringly expensive”, and should be replaced with the “realistic promise” for the UK not to contribute more than one percent of global emissions.
The world’s foremost climate science body, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has stated that CO2 “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 heatwaves, heavy rains, and drought”.
The IPCC has also warned that climate action has been delayed by “rhetoric and misinformation that undermines climate science and disregards risk and urgency”.
Record is a “life vice president” of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) think tank, which he chaired until July 2023. The IEA has opposed state-led climate policies and has advocated for more fossil fuel extraction. The think tank received funding from the oil giant BP every year from 1967 to at least 2018. Record has given money to both the IEA and the GWPF.
The GWPF and the IEA are part of the Tufton Street network of think tanks and lobbying groups based in Westminster, all of which campaign for less government regulation, including on climate change.
When questioned 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 GWPF and the Tories
A number of other Tory MPs have also recently received donations from funders of the GWPF.
One of the early funders of the GWPF, Lord Michael Hintze, donated £18,000 to a number of Tory MPs from May to August. A hedge fund manager, Conservative peer and major party donor, Lord Hintze has said that he believes “there is climate change” caused “in part due to human activity over the past century”. However, he has said that “all sides must be heard” on the issue “to reach the right conclusion for society as a whole”.
A number of climate consensus studies conducted between 2004 and 2015 found that between 90 percent and 100 percent of experts agree that humans are responsible for climate change. A study published in 2021, which reviewed over 3,000 scientific papers, found that over 99 percent of climate science literature says that global warming is caused by human activity.
Lord Hintze’s recent donations included £2,000 to Claire Coutinho, £5,000 to Iain Duncan Smith, £2,500 to Alison Griffiths, £2,500 to Kit Malthouse, £2,000 to Andrew Murrison, £2,500 to Patrick Spencer, and £2,500 to Nick Timothy.
Former energy and net zero secretary Coutinho – who oversaw the weakening of a number of flagship climate policies – received another £2,000 from Lord Hintze in January.
Lord Hintze is one of the Conservative Party’s most prolific donors in recent years and has given more than £4 million to the party and its candidates since 2002.
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.
GWPF donor Lord Jon Moynihan has also given £12,000 to a number of Tory MPs in recent months, including £5,000 to Peter Fortune, £2,000 to Mark Francois, and £5,000 to Thomas Bradley. He has now donated more than £600,000 to the Conservatives and its candidates since 2001.
Lord Moynihan gave £25,000 to the GWPF between 2018 and 2023, and has donated over £300,000 to other “free market” groups in the Tufton Street network in recent years, including the IEA.
Lord Moynihan also has substantial oil and gas investments. The peer’s register of interests shows that he holds shares worth more than £100,000 in each of the oil and gas majors BP, Shell, and TotalEnergies.
The GWPF and NZW have a number of political ties. Labour MP Graham Stringer is a director of the GWFP, having joined its board of trustees in 2015. Lord David Frost, a Tory peer and the UK’s former chief Brexit negotiator, is a trustee of the organisation alongside Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson. Former Tory MP Andrea Jenkyns, who lost her seat in July’s general election, is a director of NZW.
“The government may have changed, but it’s not clear much else has when it comes to climate crisis denialism,” Jolyon Maugham, executive director of the Good Law Project, told DeSmog. “Labour MP Graham Stringer continues to sit on the board of the GWPF and Neil Record, who chairs its subsidiary, is funding the would-be Tory leader Kemi Badenoch.”
Following a review by the Charity Commission into the GWPF’s activities and structure, the group announced that it would soon be ending its formal ownership of NZW.
All the MPs and donors mentioned in this article were approached for comment.
