Racism is central to Reform UK, but the party is also entangled with anti‑establishment fakery, climate change denial, transphobia, misogyny and pro‑corporate policies.
The anti-establishment fakery was on display last November, when Farage posted on social media, “Big business and big government work together. There is nothing about Sir Keir Starmer that represents change.”Adding to this already vile concoction of politics is misogyny and transphobia. This was on display at Reform UK’s recent regional conference in Leicester, where Tice opened his speech with a transphobic joke about pronouns. The result is an over-arching package of the politics of division. This is hardly a surprise from a party whose senior members say they look to Marine Le Pen’s fascist National Rally (RN) and the far right Alternative for Germany (AfD) as inspiration.
Farage likes to paint Reform UK as the insurgent force in British politics. He claims that Reform UK is “very much on the side of the little guy or woman”. Its MPs often denounce the two-party system and multinational corporations in favour of “real entrepreneurship”. This language is an attempt to mobilise the historic base of the far right, which has typically built among small producers and independent professionals.
But Reform UK is as establishment as it gets. Four out of the five Reform UK MPs—Nigel Farage, Richard Tice, Rupert Lowe and Lee Anderson—are millionaires.
Its policies are a mish-mash of pro-corporate proposals. Tax cuts for business, austerity measures totalling £50 billion a year, a massive programme of deregulation, tax relief for private healthcare, abolishing inheritance tax for property under £2 million and scrapping net zero climate targets.
It’s clear the party stands for putting more money in the pockets of the bosses and the rich.
And it uses climate denial to drive further division. Deputy leader Richard Tice is one of the worst for this. At one point he stated “there is no climate crisis” and claimed “CO2 isn’t a poison. It’s plant food”.
Adding to this already vile concoction of politics is misogyny and transphobia. This was on display at Reform UK’s recent regional conference in Leicester, where Tice opened his speech with a transphobic joke about pronouns. The result is an over-arching package of the politics of division. This is hardly a surprise from a party whose senior members say they look to Marine Le Pen’s fascist National Rally (RN) and the far right Alternative for Germany (AfD) as inspiration.
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.”
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 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.
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.
One expert called Nigel Farage’s policies a contract to “bankrupt Britain and condemn future generations to climate catastrophe”.
Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, which is funded by climate science deniers and fossil fuel interests, has launched its manifesto with a pledge to expand oil and gas exploration and open new coal mines.
The document repeats the party’s policy to “scrap net zero”, the UK’s legally-binding target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It says Reform would “fast-track licences of North Sea gas and oil” and introduce two-year “test sites” for the controversial practice of fracking for shale gas, followed by “major production when safety is proven”.
It says Reform would “increase and incentivise UK lithium mining for electric batteries, combined cycle gas turbines, clean synthetic fuel and clean coal mining”.
Coal emits the most carbon dioxide (CO2) of any fossil fuel. The world’s foremost climate science body, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has stated that 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 International Energy Agency (IEA) has said that any new fossil fuel projects would be incompatible with limiting warming to 1.5°C.
Earlier this month, DeSmog revealed that Reform had received more than £2.3 million from oil and gas interests, highly polluting industries, and climate science deniers since December 2019 – amounting to 92 percent of the party’s donations during that period.
Reform’s manifesto also says it would impose billions of pounds’ worth of taxes on renewable energy, claiming that renewables have increased energy bills. The party says that scrapping net zero would save the UK £30 billion a year – a claim that contradicts the views of scientists and economists.
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 1 percent of the UK’s annual economic output. The government independent spending watchdog – 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”.
Ed Matthew, campaigns director at the energy think tank E3G, said: “Nigel Farage’s pitch to obliterate net zero investment would damage the UK’s economic recovery and keep UK households hooked on high-cost gas.
“Net zero is the economic opportunity of the century. Farage is a climate change denier, in the pocket of fossil fuel vested interests, and he has presented a ‘contract’ to bankrupt Britain and condemn future generations to climate catastrophe.”
Dirty Donors
Reform has received a fortune from wealthy donors who either deny climate science or have interests in polluting industries.
Since 2019, Reform has received more than £1.1 million in donations from Richard Tice, the party’s former leader and current chairman, plus more than 50 loans collectively worth around £1.4 million from a Tice-owned company called Tisun Investments.
Tice is one of the UK’s most prominent climate science deniers, using his presenting role on the right-wing broadcaster GB News to attack net zero policies and the science behind them. Tice has claimed that “there is no climate crisis” and expressed the view that “CO2 isn’t a poison. It’s plant food”.
Reform has received more than £500,000 since the last general election from Jeremy Hosking, whose investment firm Hosking Partners had more than $134 million (around £108 million) invested in the energy sector at the close of 2021, two thirds of which was in the oil industry, along with millions in coal and gas.
Hosking previously told DeSmog: “I do not have millions in fossil fuels; it is the clients of Hosking Partners who are the beneficiaries of these investments.”
Farage also has a history of denying the science of climate change and attacking green policies. Speaking on GB News in August 2021, he said that he was “very much an environmentalist” and that he couldn’t “abide things like plastics in our seas, pollution in our rivers.” However, on the issue of climate change, he added: “What annoys me though, is this complete obsession with carbon dioxide almost to the exclusion of everything else, the alarmism that comes with it, based on dodgy predictions and science.”
The IPCC has stated that it is “unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land”.
Reform has also received £200,000 from First Corporate Consultants, a firm owned by Terence Mordaunt, a director and former chair of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), the UK’s leading climate science denial group.
‘Problematic’ Policies
Reform’s previous manifesto, which was on the party’s website as of last week, said the government’s windfall tax on oil and gas companies should be “scrapped”. It is not clear whether this is still Reform policy, as it does not appear in the new manifesto.
“Everyone can see that the oil and gas companies have raked in billions in profits since the start of the energy crisis and that it is the soaring price of gas – and our high dependency on it – that lies at the root of our high energy bills”, said Tessa Khan, executive director of environmental campaign group Uplift.
She added: “Our energy system is broken, but the only way to fix it is to phase out gas, not double down on new drilling, while scrapping support for insulation and renewables, as Reform is proposing.”
Analysis by the independent research group, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), today called the numbers in Reform’s manifesto “problematic”, adding: “Spending reductions would save less than stated, and the tax cuts would cost more than stated, by a margin of tens of billions of pounds per year.”
In May, a Reform spokesperson told DeSmog: “Climate change is real, Reform UK believes we must adapt, rather than foolishly think you can stop it.
“We are proud to be the only party to understand that economic growth depends on cheap domestic energy and we are proud that we are the only party that are climate science realists, realising you can not stop the power of the sun, volcanoes or sea level oscillation.”
In May, DeSmog revealed that the Conservative Party had received £8.4 million from fossil fuel interests, highly polluting industries, and climate science deniers since the 2019 election. The party received an additional £225,000 from fossil fuel interests during the first week of the 2024 campaign – equivalent to 40 percent of its funding during this period.
An investigation last week mapped the Conservatives’ ties to a network of climate denial and fossil fuel interests, and the party last week launched its manifesto by promising to issue more oil and gas licences.
Image of Richard Tice, leader of Reform UK. BBC Question Time.
‘What makes you think you understand how climate change works better than all of the world’s scientific experts?’
The leader of Reform UK was dealt a humiliating hand on BBC Question Time after facing a backlash against his arguments on climate change and climate denial.
Richard Tice got owned by leader of the Green Party Carla Denyer during a lively exchange about what action needs to be taken to combat the climate crisis.
The leader of the right-wing populist party, who’s been known to make bizarre and inaccurate statements on climate science denial, instigated some eye rolls when he stated, “the climate has changed for millions and millions of years.. way before man-made CO2 emissions”.
He went on to face ridicule when questioned on his understanding of climate science and his lack of scientific background by Green Party leader and engineer by trade, Carla Denyer.
…
Image of the Green Party’s Carla Denyer on BBC Question Time.
The Green MP said: “The news has been full of pretty alarming evidence that climate change is not a concern that is going to come down the track sometime in the future, it’s here right now.
“And the best time that we could have brought in the policies to tackle this was of course decades ago. We’ve known about climate change my whole life. Successive governments in the UK and internationally largely failed to do that. So the second best time to do it is right now.”
She added: “I’m an engineer by background. I didn’t want to be a politician, I’m in this because I realised the people in power making the decisions were not making the right ones to tackle this crisis.”
Lee Anderson MP has defected to Reform UK. Credit: Official House of Commons portrait
The Ashfield MP, who left the Conservatives today for Reform, shares his new party’s trenchant opposition to net zero.
The UK’s main climate science denial party has gained its first member of parliament with the defection of suspended Conservative MP Lee Anderson.
Anderson announced today that he was joining Reform UK, a right-wing, anti-green and anti-immigration party which is currently polling at 12 percent.
Reform campaigns to “scrap all of net zero” and last year received £135,000 from donors who deny climate science or have business links to fossil fuels.
Anderson has repeatedly attacked the government’s net zero policies, arguing in February 2024 that a net zero UK “wouldn’t make a blind bit of difference to the earth’s atmosphere”.
He is also a vocal backer of new oil, gas and coal extraction in the UK. He has suggested that coal, the most polluting fossil fuel, is environmentally sustainable because “coal 100 million years ago was trees and plants”.
In 2022 he supported the decision to open a new coal mine in Cumbria, which he described as “part of the net zero journey”.
Since June 2023 Anderson has worked as a presenter on right-wing broadcaster GB News alongside Reform’s leader Richard Tice and its honourary president Nigel Farage.
While Anderson has contradicted the scientific consensus on net zero and fossil fuels, Reform’s leadership has gone further, explicitly rejecting the climate science on global warming.
Tice has said “CO2 isn’t poison, it’s plant food”, while the party’s London mayoral candidate Howard Cox has said “man is not responsible for global warming”.
Reform’s manifesto falsely claims that “scientists disagree as to how much” humans have had an impact on global warming. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s foremost climate science body, has stated that it is “unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land”.
When approached for comment, a Reform UK spokesperson told DeSmog: “You know what our policies are towards net zero and the climate agenda” adding that it should come as no surprise when Reform is “supported by others that agree with us”.
Lee Anderson and the Conservative Party had not responded at time of publication.
Anderson was suspended from the Conservative Party last month after saying “Islamists” had “got control” of London Mayor Sadiq Khan, who is a Muslim, adding that the Mayor had “given our capital city away to his mates”.
The MP had resigned as the Conservative Party’s deputy chair in January to protest the government’s bill on deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda, which he considered too weak.
Anderson and Climate Denial
Anderson has repeatedly attacked net zero policies, arguing last month that if the UK “became net zero tomorrow” it wouldn’t affect global warming due to higher volumes of emissions produced by other countries.
In September 2022, Anderson signed an open letter written by the Net Zero Scrutiny Group (NZSG) of backbench MPs that was published in The Telegraph. It called on the UK government to green-light fracking for shale gas, and argued that gas projects should be “fast-tracked” in light of the energy crisis.
At last month’s launch of Popular Conservatives – a new Tory faction run by Mark Littlewood, the former director of the BP-funded Institute of Economic Affairs think tank – Anderson said net zero “never comes up on the doorstep” aside from “the odd weirdo”.
Last July, Anderson called the climate activist group Just Stop Oil “the biggest menace in our society” in a post on X (formerly Twitter) where he celebrated the approval of hundreds more oil and gas licences in the North Sea.
GB News and Fossil Fuels
In June 2023, Anderson joined right-wing outlet GB News as a presenter, a role which pays him £100,000 per year – around £20,000 more than his MPs’ salary.
A DeSmog investigation last year found one in three GB News presenters broadcast climate science denial, while half attacked net zero policies.
GB News is co-owned by British millionaire Paul Marshall, who in October DeSmog revealed has £1.8 billion invested in fossil fuel interests through his hedge fund Marshall Wace in the year to June 2023.
The channel’s other biggest shareholder, the United Arab Emirates-based investment firm Legatum Group, runs the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC), a conservative project fronted by Canadian climate denier Jordan Peterson.
ARC’s advisors include some of the world’s most prominent climate crisis deniers, including Danish writer Bjorn Lomborg, US activist Michael Shellenberger, and former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who is also a GWPF trustee.
GB News is the subject of several ongoing probes by broadcast regulator Ofcom, and earlier this month reported losses of £42 million in the year to May 2023, and £76 million since its launch in 2021.
