Scientifically illiterate and funded by the fossil fuel industry: the Reform party represents the UK's very own MAGA populism.
Though Farage declines to be its Trump (updated: now he is!)
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.’
On the costs of energy transition Carbonbrief writes;
‘The (oil funded) climate-sceptic Reform party has mislead by omission, highlighting a large and scary-sounding figure for the cost of net-zero, without mentioning the cost of the alternative.
Its manifesto says the cost of net-zero is “estimated by the National Grid and others at some £2tn or more” – but leaves out the part about this being cheaper than not meeting the target: ‘scenarios that deliver Net Zero do not result in a material increase in costs over the scenario where Net Zero is not met by 2050’. They also ignore the environmental and human cost of not addressing the climate crisis.
Strikingly, the IEA concluded that accelerating climate action to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 would make the global energy system “more affordable and fairer”. Rapid role out of clean technologies will make energy cheaper, not more costly.
According to the report, this is because higher investment costs would be more than offset by lower fuel bills, greater efficiency and reduced fossil fuel rents. It concluded:
“Energy transitions could lead to major reductions in household energy bills and accelerate progress towards universal energy access. But managing upfront costs for poorer and rural households – as well as ongoing costs – remains a key public policy challenge.”’
Hence considerable pushback on green investment from richer and urban households. And more propaganda from the oil industry.
On ULEZ, OpenDemocracy writes; ‘In 2021, brewery owner Alan Miller and alleged Formula 1 marketing scammer David Fleming formed the Together Association. Ostensibly created to resist lockdowns, vaccine passports and digital ID, the opaquely funded enterprise has the support of a number of well-known right-wing figures and ex-Conservative MP Andrew Bridgen.
As the effects of the pandemic have lessened, Together has latched onto anti-net-zero campaigning, perhaps as the next part of its plan to operate as a “shadow cabinet”.
Even as transport secretary Grant Shapps told Khan that funding for Transport for London would be wholly contingent on the ULEZ expansion, Conservative-run Facebook groups paid for numerous ads presenting the scheme as a Labour-imposed tax on the poor. One such group, ‘STOP ULEZ’, appeared small and relatively innocuous, but its bio revealed it was “run by Kanto Systems Limited on behalf of 3rd Party Ltd”.
Both Kanto and 3rd Party Ltd are owned by Thomas Borwick – digital strategist for Vote Leave and the Conservative Party as well as being the chair of the Cities of London and Westminster Conservatives. Borwick has since been accused of using 3rd Party to engage in election interference after boasting that he could create “unknown online campaign groups to ‘split the vote’ of Conservative opponents”.
Prior to this, Borwick worked for Cambridge Analytica and, following the company’s collapse, hired two of its data scientists to run his newest company the College Green Group, which currently runs four all-party parliamentary groups (APPGs) including one tackling “environmental, social and governance” issues.’
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 having donated £10 million to Reform in the lead up to the 2019 general election.
Ex-Bullingdon Club member, husband of Candice Owens and former CEO of Parler George Farmer gave £200,000 in 2019.
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’.
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’.
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?” ‘
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