Neither Keir Starmer nor Rishi Sunak has any real plan to improve the lives of Disabled people | Jonathan Hordle – ITV via Getty Images
So far, we’ve heard more about Starmer and Sunak’s parents than the UK’s 16 million Disabled people
“This election is about who our country works for — the patriotic belief that Britain can be better and must be better,” said Kier Starmer concluding the first leaders’ debate earlier this month.
Yet every leadership debate so far has given more time to talking about Starmer and Rishi Sunak’s parents than these problems, which face millions of Disabled people up and down the country.
The general election campaign has solidified that neither the Labour leader nor his rival, incumbent Conservative prime minister Rishi Sunak, has any interest in improving our lives.
It is not as if the Conservatives or Labour don’t know about the issues we face. A United Nations report published in April confirmed that the UK is violating our human rights; a parliamentary committee last month found that “Disabled people undeniably encounter unnecessary and severe barriers to accessing suitable housing in England”; and the Department of Work and Pensions is under investigation by the Equality and Human Rights Commission over its treatment of Disabled claimants.
Disabled people in the UK are not a homogenous group. Some of us experience greater injustice than others. But we also have many things in common. We all want to live in an inclusive society where everyone has a fulfilling life and feels connected and valued.
We know politicians do not place the same worth on our lives as others; every day we experience discrimination, oppression and barriers to our inclusion and full participation in society because they won’t take the action needed to change it.
Years of deep cuts to services and neglect mean societal infrastructure, such as housing, transport and street environment, consistently fails to meet our needs. This structural decline has coincided with anti-migrant, anti-trans and racist policies, leaving ever-increasing numbers of us in poverty, homeless, incarcerated or dead.
The UN report was clear: “There has been no significant progress for Disabled people throughout the UK concerning their right to living independently and being included in the community.
“While some reforms and policies have been undertaken to provide financial support, accessible housing, and transport, this has been inadequate considering the cost-of-living crisis.”
One would expect this damning conclusion to be a key feature of the election campaign. But over the past four weeks, Labour and the Tories have both failed to provide anything of substance to help Disabled people.
Sunak’s Conservatives have instead pledged to shave £12bn a year from the cost of benefits, much of which would come from a crackdown on the personal independence payment (PIP) given to people with extra care or mobility needs. The party also seeks to tighten the work capability assessment (WCA), which would see more Disabled people declared fit to work and denied their benefit.
Labour’s manifesto, meanwhile, is notable for what it lacks. Previous promises to overhaul the welfare system, end punitive sanctions and co-produce disability-related policy with Disabled people are all missing – as are commitments to end care charges, increase carers’ allowance and ensure better provision of accessible housing.
Labour’s vows to improve SEN (special education needs) provision in schools and introduce changes to support Disabled people to gain and retain jobs are sticking plasters at best. Its manifesto sports a glaring lack of immediate investment in disability and carer benefits and social care – and we all know you can’t fix things without investment.
With so little real change on offer, Disabled people must unite and fight back. We can draw inspiration from the experiences of UK-based Disabled activists and the radical disabled resistance of the past 40 years. No changes affecting us have come through without collective struggle and organising.
As part of the DPO Forum England, a collective of Disabled people’s organisations in England, we are committed to joining forces nationwide and unifying our demands. That’s why we came together to create the Disabled People’s Manifesto, which contains radical policy demands for systemic overhaul and transformation.
We, as Disabled people, must now come together and demand our politicians take up the manifesto and commit to creating a country that values equity, dignity, respect, trust, and support as much as we value anything else. Our political system should be focused on supporting Disabled people to live the lives we have a right to, which no candidate sweating under the bright studio lights can deliver on their own.
Together, we can create space for ourselves and our ideas, and integrate the energy, dedication and skills of our community to create a new future.
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.
Britain tested nuclear weapons in the Pacific in the 1950s. (Photo: Yui Mok / Alamy)
The lavish spending would continue under Labour.
Britain spends a larger portion of its military budget on nuclear weapons than any other state, a major report published today reveals.
Rishi Sunak’s government is putting 12 per cent of defence expenditure – equivalent to £12,000 every minute – towards the UK’s arsenal of at least 225 warheads.
Sunak increased spending on nuclear weapons last year by 17 per cent to £6.5 billion – a greater increase than any other nuclear power except the US.
Over the last five years UK expenditure rose by a staggering 43 per cent.
The startling figures appear in new research by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), a widely respected group that was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017.
ICAN calculates that Britain is the world’s fourth highest spender on nuclear weapons after the US, China and Russia.
Nuclear Starmer
The group’s report comes at a time when the Labour leadership is championing nuclear weapons. The party’s manifesto states: “Our commitment to the UK’s nuclear deterrent is absolute.”
This spending commitment is in stark contrast to Keir Starmer’s extreme caution when it comes to investing in public services.
The party describes the “independent nuclear deterrent” as “the bedrock of Labour’s plan to keep Britain safe”.
However, it is far from independent. Regular flights from the US carry material that are essential ingredients of Britain’s Trident nuclear missile system.
A Mutual Defence Agreement (MDA) between Britain and the US enshrines Whitehall’s reliance on the Pentagon for essential technology.
The agreement, which is due to be renewed this year, is incorporated in US law. Yet it has no legal status in Britain and has never been the subject of a substantial debate or vote in parliament.
The Liberal Democrats’ policy is identical to those of the Conservatives and Labour, saying they will “maintain the UK’s nuclear deterrent with four submarines providing continuous at-sea deterrence”.
The Scottish National Party has a long record of being opposed to nuclear weapons, which it says are “wrong strategically, morally and financially.”
It adds that it supports long-term investment in the Trident submarine base in Faslane as a conventional military base.
The Green party says it would “dismantle Britain’s entire Trident nuclear deterrent and remove all foreign nuclear weapons from UK soil.”
A man wades through flood water in Downpatrick, Northern Ireland, in November. Photograph: Liam McBurney/PA
Winter downpours also made 20% wetter and will occur every three years without urgent carbon cuts, experts warn
The seemingly “never-ending” rain last autumn and winter in the UK and Ireland was made 10 times more likely and 20% wetter by human-caused global heating, a study has found.
More than a dozen storms battered the region in quick succession between October and March, which was the second-wettest such period in nearly two centuries of records. The downpour led to severe floods, at least 20 deaths, severe damage to homes and infrastructure, power blackouts, travel cancellations, and heavy losses of crops and livestock.
The level of rain caused by the storms would have occurred just once in 50 years without the climate crisis, but is now expected every five years owing to 1.2C of global heating reached in recent years. If fossil fuel burning is not rapidly cut and the global temperature reaches 2C in the next decade or two, such severe wet weather would occur every three years on average, the analysis showed.
The experts behind the study warned that work to protect the populations of the UK and Ireland was still “sorely lacking” and poor and vulnerable people were hardest hit. For example, dehumidifiers provided to dry out flooded homes were not used by some because of high energy costs, while others could not afford to replace losses of frozen food after storms cut power supplies.
The analysis, conducted by climate scientists working as part of the World Weather Attribution group, compared how likely and how intense the wet winter was in today’s heated world with how likely it would have been in a world without high levels of carbon emissions. Warmer air can hold more water vapour and therefore produce more rain. Hundreds of “attribution studies” have shown how global heating is already supercharging extreme weather such as heatwaves, wildfires, droughts and storms across the world.
“The seemingly never-ending rainfall this autumn and winter across the UK and Ireland had notable impacts,” said Dr Mark McCarthy, a climate scientist at the UK Met Office and part of the WWA team. “In the future we can expect further increases – that’s why it is so important for us to adapt to our changing climate and become more resilient.”
Dr Sarah Kew, a researcher at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute and also part of the WWA team, said: “The UK and Ireland face a wetter, damper and mouldier future due to climate change. Until the world reduces emissions to net zero, the climate will continue to warm, and rainfall in the UK and Ireland will continue to get heavier.”
A mashup of three Epoch Times adverts posted on Meta. Credit: The Epoch Times / Meta
Campaigners have referred the Epoch Times to the UK advertising regulator for “stoking the climate culture war” on social media.
The pro-Trump Epoch Times has run hundreds of anti-climate social media adverts in Europe since the beginning of 2024 that have been seen millions of times, DeSmog can reveal.
Epoch Times accounts in Europe have run 425 adverts on Facebook, Instagram, and X (formerly Twitter) that have attacked or undermined climate science, green energy, or climate action since the start of the year. These adverts have been run in the UK, Germany, Slovakia, and Bulgaria, appearing on social media feeds at least 2.3 million times across Facebook and Instagram, and 3.1 million times on X.
These anti-climate ads were active for 22 days on average on Meta platforms (Facebook and Instagram), while they were displayed for 9.5 days on average on X.
Four of the adverts posted by Epoch Times on Meta have now been referred to the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA), a UK watchdog, by the campaign group Global Witness. The group is calling for the ASA to open an investigation into whether the Epoch Times breached the Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) Code and, if so, to ban these adverts.
The Epoch Times claims to be the fastest growing independent news outlet in the United States. It claims to host websites across 22 languages in 35 countries, publishing online and in print. The publication has gained a substantial online following in recent years, amassing more than 10 million followers across its various Facebook accounts.
Based in New York, the Epoch Times is affiliated with the Falun Gong new religious movement in China and is staunchly anti-communist. Though the source of its income isn’t publicly declared, former employees told the New York Times that the publication was financed “by a combination of subscriptions, ads and donations from wealthy Falun Gong practitioners.”
The publication has propelled itself on Facebook by filling its feeds with viral, feel-good videos alongside its often partisan news coverage.
According to NewsGuard, an independent company that rates the credibility of news sites, Epoch Times articles “frequently include distorted, misleading, or unsubstantiated claims.” The Epoch Times claims on its website that its reporters are “guided by the highest code of conduct and ethics”.
The Epoch Times spent at least $1.5 million on adverts in support of then Republican President Donald Trump from 2018 to 2019 – more than any group other than the Trump campaign.
The publication was banned from advertising by Meta following these revelations, and the social media company told DeSmog that it ”continues to enforce this ban”. However, a number of Epoch Times offshoots have been allowed to promote climate science denial across Europe this year.
Many of these adverts have explicitly questioned the contribution of carbon dioxide (CO2) to climate change. The adverts have featured statements including “Several climate scientists say CO2 is essential and higher levels are not a problem”, and “What if more CO2 is actually good for the environment?”
The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s foremost climate science body, 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 adverts ran for months, and reached millions of people, despite Meta’s pledge to tackle climate misinformation. Ten were removed prior to DeSmog contacting Meta, of which six were removed over a failure to include an appropriate advertising disclaimer.
“After sowing division and disinformation in the U.S., everyone in the UK should be alarmed that the Epoch Times is using the same playbook here,” said Nienke Palstra, campaign strategy lead at Global Witness. “We have already seen politicians trying to stoke a climate culture war and the Epoch Times is spending big to tap into this sentiment. We cannot allow the future of our planet to be put at threat for the political gain of extremists and populists.”
A spokesperson for the Epoch Times told Global Witness that scientists have always differed in their opinion on climate change and that “To ban different opinions does not help a civilised open society and erodes freedom of speech.”
Climate Denial Content
The bulk of the anti-climate adverts seen by DeSmog were posted by Epoch Times London, a Facebook page created in October 2023 that has fewer than 600 followers.
Many of the adverts posted by Epoch Times London questioned climate science, for example claiming that “the greenhouse effect is real but irrelevant”, and that “new studies undercut the ‘scientifically empty’ global warming narrative.”
One advert entitled “Scientists Expose Major Problems With Climate Change Data” was linked to an Epoch Times article that claimed climate change can be best explained by “natural variation”. The article also said that attempts to create a scientific consensus around human-caused climate change are the product of “deliberate fraud” according to “some experts.”
The same article quoted Willie Soon, a scientist who has cast doubt on climate science and who has openly admitted accepting research funding from fossil fuel interests.
A number of the Epoch Times London adverts suggested that the consensus on climate change is based on a wilful misinterpretation of evidence by the scientific community, asking questions such as “Climate change or data corruption? Experts question mainstream narrative.”
DeSmog’s analysis found that Epoch Times London ran at least 392 unique adverts on Meta since the start of the year that attacked or attempted to undermine climate science, green energy, or climate action.
Of those adverts, 146 were still active prior to DeSmog contacting Meta. According to an analysis of Meta’s ad archive, Epoch Times London has spent between £12,600 and £51,715 on its anti-climate advertising since the start of the year, with those adverts having been seen between 1.9 million and 2.5 million times. Meta has now blocked Epoch Times London’s ability to post adverts.
According to Companies House, Epoch Times London was incorporated in 2014. The publication drew criticism in the UK in 2020 for posting free editions of its paper to Brighton and Hove residents, the front page of which included claims that the Chinese Communist Party had deliberately covered up evidence of COVID-19’s existence.
Following complaints from constituents, Lloyd Russell-Moyle, the Labour MP for Kemptown in Brighton, publicly criticised the Epoch Times in the House of Commons and called on Royal Mail to stop posting its print edition.
Epoch’s European Operations
Elsewhere in Europe, DeSmog has seen evidence of anti-climate advertising from Epoch Times-affiliated accounts.
The most prolific source of these adverts has been the German Epoch Times account on X, which has run 61 anti-climate adverts since the beginning of the year, reaching at least 1.5 million people and appearing 3.2 million times on X feeds across the German-speaking world.
Of the adverts that made a funding declaration, all stated that they were paid for Epoch Times Europe Gmbh, a company that has existed in Germany since at least 2009 according to the country’s company register.
A number of these adverts directly questioned the role of CO2 on climate change, saying that “CO2, especially anthropogenic emissions, hardly play a role”, “Climate change: CO2 not to blame”, “Climate change is too complex to blame on CO2”, and “CO2 is the most expensive fraud in history.”
While there were fewer ads run on Meta in Germany than in the UK, they still generated at least 100,000 impressions, representing an ad spend of between €1,500 and €3,777.
An account run by German Epoch Times journalist Erik Rusch has also run at least 24 anti-climate adverts since its creation in January – though the adverts state that they were paid for by Rusch.
Some of the adverts run by Epoch Times Germany suggested that wind turbines produce nefarious health effects, including claims such as, “Don’t ignore the health effects: Doctor warns against wind turbines”, and “Wind energy under scrutiny: Dr Bellut-Staeck on the low-frequency risks to humans and animals.”
One of the German adverts quoted Fritz Vahrenholt, who is a scientific advisor to the UK’s leading climate science denial group, the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF).
Other adverts promoted by the German Epoch Times, as well as Epoch Times London, quoted fellow GWPF advisor Richard Lindzen. In one of these adverts, Lindzen was quoted as saying: “If we could get rid of 60 percent of CO2, we would all be dead.”
Germany Epoch Times adverts also linked back to articles on its website, directing readers to the claim by climate science denier John F. Clauser that the perceived climate threat is a “dangerous corruption of science.”
Another advert quoted Lindzen as asking, “Is climate change the existential threat we’ve been led to believe?” and linked to an Epoch Times interview with Lindzen on its YouTube series “American Thought Leaders”.
Former UK Prime Minister Liz Truss was recently interviewed on this series, while a parallel series, “British Thought Leaders”, has interviewed a number of climate science deniers. Since the beginning of March, this series has featured Martin Durkin, Rupert Darwall, and GWPF advisor Gwythian Prins. These interviews were headlined: “The Science Simply Does Not Support the Ridiculous Hysteria Around Climate At All”, “This Obsession With Carbon Dioxide Emissions Has Led to Tragedy”, and “The World Is at War – The West’s Green Policies Are Playing Into Our Enemy’s Hands”.
Epoch Times Bulgaria has posted three anti-climate ads since the beginning of the year, one of which was entitled “scientists alarmed that there is no real evidence that CO2 is causing climate change”.
Meta has pledged to take action against false narratives on climate change, and the platform has committing to using a “suite of tools, such as fact checking and labels, to help combat climate misinformation.”
In May 2021, Facebook said that it would begin attaching informational labels to posts about climate change, directing users to the platform’s new “Climate Science Information Center”.
However, research conducted in 2022 by the Center for Countering Digital Hate found that Facebook is failing to flag at least half of climate misinformation content.
“Despite claiming to take climate misinformation seriously, Meta has a history of allowing climate disinformation posts with high-engagement to go unchecked,” said Ilana Berger, senior climate and energy disinformation researcher at the misinformation watchdog Media Matters. “If Meta is committed to combating climate disinformation on its platform, it must at the very least consistently enforce its existing policies.”
Meanwhile, following his takeover of Twitter in 2022, Elon Musk has slashed the number of staff who identify harmful content and misinformation. X did not respond to DeSmog’s request for comment.
“Climate misinformation threatens all of our futures – and with elections pending across Europe, the stakes could not be higher,” said Richard Wilson, director of the campaign group Stop Funding Heat. “But the same money that is fuelling this problem could also be the key to a solution. If enough advertisers speak out, and urge Facebook and Twitter to stop climate lies being promoted through their platforms, they will have to clean up their act.”
