Scientifically illiterate and funded by anti-net zero and fossil fuel industries; the Reform party represents the UK's very own MAGA populism.
Though Farage declines to be its Trump.
From Man catastrophically fails GSCE biology;
‘The leader of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK Party has been rinsed over a video he posted on X in which he attempts to “challenge the climate change nonsense” by making a scientifically false claim which viewers have argued a primary school pupil could debunk.
In what has been described as a bizarre and “eye-watering stupid” 41 second climate denial rant, leader of the right-wing populist political party, Richard Tice, attempts to claim that C02 is “plant food” and therefore “not a problem”.
“C02, people make out that it’s some sort of poison,” says Tice in the video. “It’s not. It’s plant food. It’s responsible for photosynthesis, without which we get no plants, no food, we all die. You’ve got to challenge the mainstream narrative on this.”
Scientists have proven how carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increases by 50% due to human activities in less than 200 years, and that C02 in the atmosphere is responsible for warming the planet, therefore causing climate change.
Viewers were quick to add a bit of context in the community notes under the video on X, which read: “CO2 is not regarded as a toxic pollutant and this has never been a part of the scientific case for reducing our emissions. Although the proportion of atmospheric CO2 is small, its effect on climate is well understood and backed up by an overwhelming scientific consensus.”
Though Tice’s scientific illiteracy is also amusing, there is of course a huge danger in his spread of disinformation, as ‘Tice’s take’ on the climate attempts to legitimise further the continued drilling for new gas and oil.
This is particularly revealing when you look at the funders to Nigel Farage’s Reform Party, which received a total of £135,000 from climate science deniers and fossil fuel interests in 2023.’
From Who funds the Reform Party;
‘Formerly known as the Brexit Party before its rebrand, the party saw a funding peak during the 2019 election year, when the House of Commons reported that the Party received the highest average value per donation, at £461,111, however registered only received nine donations from two individuals.
Most significant contributions have been from former Conservative donors, such as British businessman Jeremy Hosking who gave nearly £250,000 in 2019, and over £2,500,000 in total as he continues to provide donations for Reform.
Brexiteer Hosking has also given millions to Laurence Fox’s Reclaim Party.
While Thailand based, technology investor and businessman Christopher Harborne is one of the biggest single donors to the party, also a Tory donor, having donated £10 million to Reform in the lead up to the 2019 general election.
Ex-Bullingdon Club member George Farmer gave £200,000 in 2019, the husband of Candace Owens and former CEO of far-right platform Parler.
The same year also saw the Brexit Party embroiled in a funding scandal after leader Nigel Farage boasted it had raised £750,000 in small donations in 10 days. The Party was criticised by the Electoral Commission over gifts accepted through online payments systems such as PayPal and told to check all donations for “possible illegal funding”.
The Party has also been criticised for its structure which gives almost total control to its leader, with its 115,000 paying registered supporters not holding any influence over policy.
Last year saw a marked rise in the party’s funding, compared with 2022 when the party received only £20,000 from Richard Tice’s company ‘Britain means Business’.
However the Party’s latest accounts on Companies House from December 2022 also stated £1,106,050 worth of net liabilities, made up mainly of directors loans from Richard Tice, which are to “help grow the party”.
Anti-net zero funders
(NB Net zero is a scam enabling indefinite procrastination on climate action.) It was reported by the climate disinformation database DeSmog that all of Reform Party’s funders in 2023 had oil and gas investments or ties to climate science denial, totalling £135,000.
The party holds a vocal anti-net zero stance, seemingly reflected in its funding, which includes Panther Securities, a property investment company whose chairman has spoken out against climate policies and was also a former UKIP donor.
Other donors include First Corporate, who gave £100,000 in June 2023, a consultants firm owned by Terence Mordaunt, director of the UK’s leading climate science denial group, Global Warming Policy Foundation.
From Nigel Farage’s Reform Party Took £135,000 from Climate Science Deniers and Fossil Fuel Interests;
‘Reform UK, formerly the Brexit Party, is a vocal critic of climate action, and last year called for a referendum on the UK’s net zero policies.
The party has pledged to accelerate oil and gas drilling, start fracking for shale gas, end subsidies for renewables, and scrap the windfall tax on oil and gas companies.
Reform UK’s leader Richard Tice and its honorary president Farage – who is currently a contestant on the new series of reality TV show ‘I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here’ – are both presenters on GB News, where they regularly attack climate policies. Earlier this year, Tice claimed “there is no climate crisis”.
The anti-climate stance of Tice and Farage is reflected in the interests of the party’s donors. Latest official records show that all donations made to Reform UK so far this year are from individuals with ties to climate science denial or fossil fuel interests.
This marks a significant change from 2022, when the party’s only donation was £20,000 from Tice’s company ‘Britain Means Business’, but 2023 is still well below its peak of £2 million as the Brexit Party in the election year of 2019.
Donors registered this year include: a firm owned by Terence Mordaunt, a director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), the UK’s leading climate science denial group; political donor Jeremy Hosking, who has millions invested in fossil fuels; and a property investment firm whose chairman has defended those who question whether “global warming is happening”.
The revelations come after DeSmog reported that hedge fund founder Paul Marshall, co-owner of GB News – which has both Farage and Tice on its payroll – has £1.8 billion invested in fossil fuels.
Richard Wilson, director of the Stop Funding Heat campaign, said the latest donations showed opponents of climate action using conservative media platforms to push their agenda.
“Next time you hear GB News lashing out at net zero or denouncing ‘climate alarmism’, it’s worth remembering how many links they have to the fossil fuel industry”, he said.
“Now it emerges that two of their leading presenters run an organisation bankrolled by fossil fuel shareholders and climate science deniers.”
Reform UK styles itself as an independent anti-elitist party. However, its donors include a wealthy businessman on the board of an opaquely funded climate science denial group.
According to the Electoral Commission register, in June, Reform UK received £100,000 from First Corporate Consultants Ltd. The company is owned by Terence Mordaunt, a major Conservative Party donor.
Mordunat is a director at the Global Warming Policy Foundation and served as its chair from April 2017 to November 2019.
The GWPF was set up by the late Nigel Lawson, a former chancellor of the exchequer, in 2009, and has consistently spread climate science denial.
The register also records another £15,000 from Jeremy Hosking, a financier and Conservative Party donor who in 2021 had millions invested in fossil fuels.
According to a story last year by openDemocracy, Hosking’s investment firm Hosking Partners had more than $134 million (around £108 million) in the energy sector at the close of 2021, two thirds of which were in the oil industry, along with millions in coal and gas.
Hosking declined to comment on funding Reform UK, but told DeSmog: “I do not have millions in fossil fuels; it is the clients of Hosking Partners who are the beneficiaries of these investments.”
Hosking gave Reform UK £500,000 in 2020, and over £1 million ahead of the 2019 general election when it was called the Brexit Party. To date Hosking has donated £1,578,000 to Reform UK.
From Who are Reform UK?
‘Detailing his thoughts on the official Reform UK website, Michael Bagley (South Devon) asserts that, “the dependents of migrants tend to be non-working and reliant on state support”. Jonathan Thackray (Dewsbury and Batley) advances that “illegal immigrants don’t have to worry about putting bread on the table”. Helen Rose O’Hare (Sherwood Forest) bemoans hotels full of illegal immigrants who are “almost entirely fighting age males”.
The drive to net zero is also on the receiving end of this style of Reform UK treatment. Characterised as a “dangerous false ideology” by Robert Hall-Palmer (Newark), it is a “demented” distraction for Barry Morgan (Barrow and Furness), and “Net Stupid” for Andy McWilliam (Loughborough). Turning words into action, Prabhdeep Singh (Feltham and Heston) details his recent week long “hunger strike” outside Uxbridge tube station, all in the name of ULEZ opposition (a campaign run by Tory strategists).
With many a Reform UK candidate hell bent on tackling the ‘woke revolution’, so the theme continues.
Anthony Mack (Clacton) fumes of “discrimination against the people of Britain in favour of foreign arrivals or minorities”. Martin Hess (Hove and Portslade) maintains that “the wokerati have made us a more colour conscious society through their obsession with white guilt and critical race theory”.
As Simon Evans (West Lancashire) likens “woke doctrine” to the arrival of the “Orwellian state”, Barry Morgan (Barrow and Furness) abhors the Equalities Act such that he will press “to expunge from these shores all reference to the divisive antiphrastic diktat of diversity, equity and inclusion”.
If they had been uttered within an alternative UK political party, a good number of these statements would likely have cost their proponent the party whip, or led to candidate de-selection. Lee Anderson MP (Ashfield) can testify to that.
Yet having been published on the party’s main website, in the world of Reform UK, it seems there is little for a Reform UK candidate to worry about. Not least of course, because within Reform UK, there is also no such thing as a ‘party whip’.
A very different approach to party policy
This very different approach to collective policy is the third factor which so differentiates Reform UK from the political mainstream.
Paul Donaghy (Washington and Gateshead South) champions the “NO whip system” as the basis for him being “free” to make decisions that are in the best interests of his constituents, in turn begging the question as to how Reform UK expects to magic up decisive government.
In practice, this ‘no whip’ system also serves as a convenient approach for the party.
Based on the ferocity and diversity of the personal statements that we have reviewed, it is hard not to conclude that Reform UK would simply be ‘unwhippable’.
For although many of the candidates hail from a Conservative background, with 19 in our sample referencing their former Conservative Party membership (including the onetime Chairman of David Cameron’s constituency association), they are not universally so. Amongst the candidate pool we also found at least three former Labour Party members.
Bridging the divide, James Crocker (Stratford on Avon) can probably claim a political first by simultaneously stating that his “heroes and influences” include both Milton Friedman and Brian Clough. The first being the free market monetarist economist once so adored by Margaret Thatcher, the second being the late football manager to whom socialism famously ‘came from the heart’, and whose comments are tweeted out by Jeremy Corbyn.
With the term collective responsibility absent from the index of the Reform UK playbook, we also discover a whole variety of tunes being sung out.
On constitutional matters, one has the suspicion that Roger Clark (Harrow East) is going further than many of his colleagues, when he states that “many serious reforms are urgently required at every institutional level” adding the “Head of State and the Royal Family” to his list.
Far from pampering to the concept of laissez-faire government, one that is so revered by many a Reform UK candidate, others appear to have taken an economic branch line. Chris Eynon (Sunderland Central) references the “national shipbuilding strategy”, whilst Teresa De Santis (Chichester) writes how “Reform will rebuild Great Britain by investing in industry like the British Steel we were once so proud of”.
This freedom for Reform UK candidates to espouse their own personal programmes for office, all published on Reform UK’s own website, exudes none of the stage management that typifies the launch of a conventional party manifesto.
Moreover it also throws up a very wide range of random policy priorities.
Raj Forhad (Ilford South) urges investment in “free mobile gyms for young generation”. Leslie Lilley (Southend East and Rochford) – not incidentally the only candidate who loves a capital letter – focuses on the “need to deal with the FLOUIDE in water (POISON English Dictionary)”. James Crocker (Stratford on Avon) is animated about “uncoordinated roadworks”, whilst Sarah Wood (Spen Valley) lambasts the banking sector for “when and how I may withdraw my money”.
Looking to the past as well as the future, Jack Brookes (Birmingham Erdington) advocates “bringing back the gold standard” to tackle inflation, whereas Ash Leaning (North Dorset) asks, “What happened to national service?”
And so we could go on, but I suspect you get the gist.’
Who is Reform’s leader?
‘Although the party’s formal leader, Richard Tice (previously Hartlepool – now suddenly Boston and Skegness) has been slightly more visible this year on our television screens, there have long been questions as to whether a grass roots movement like Reform UK could meaningfully ever progress without a heavyweight political figurehead.
Having “thought long and hard”, Nigel Farage has just announced that he won’t be joining the collective of Reform UK candidates standing for election on July 4th.
As Honorary Party President, Farage can of course still be expected to make a few choice media appearances during the upcoming campaign, but ultimately, actions speak louder than words.
Even for one of Britain’s most canny and successful political operators, the prospect of leading the folks in Reform UK, appears to be, just one challenge too many.’
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