Faced with acres of impeccably researched evidence that climate change is an existential threat to all of us, what passes for Reform UK Ltd’s environmental policy can be summed up as: ‘Nah, what do scientists know?’
Then again, could it be that Nigel Farage and co entirely accept that the planet is burning due to industrial activity, but simply don’t care as long as their paymasters are making a fortune from lighting the fires?
I only ask because if you take a look at how they get their money, the suspicion quickly grows that pretty much anyone can get Reform (previously The Brexit Party) to say pretty much anything as long as their request comes with a ‘donation’.
‘12 jobs’ Nigel
Farage himself has very few qualms about taking cash for talking nonsense. He has ‘12 ‘jobs’ on top of being an MP, all of which involve him flapping his mouth off in one form or another. While he’s been paid huge amounts to give speeches to some truly troubling groups in America, he’s not too embarrassed to sell himself for the price of a pizza, once pocketing 25 quid to read a message appearing to endorse the IRA in a video. (Yes he did, look it up.) Up the RA, eh Nigel?
If you bribe their leader in Wales to say nice things about Putin and pay their leader in England to make speeches for a firm that specialises in tax avoidance, then a few million quid should easily cover manifesto pledges to abandon net zero targets and suck out the last of the oil from the North Sea.
It is possible of course that Farage, Richard Tice etc are convinced that all this talk of a climate emergency and rising sea levels is a left-wing conspiracy to get us all to buy heat pumps, but it’s also likely that they just don’t care. Have you noticed how much climate denial emanates from the rich? For them it’s a convenient ideology, a rhetoric born of greed rather than conviction.
The rich will never watch their homes flood
Just like in America where the Trump family are busy hollowing out the economy, enriching themselves as fast as they can before the whole nation either wakes up or descends into chaos, the UK version of Project 2025 is all about money. Power yes, but power to make its extollers rich. They have no intention of changing their ways in the face of climate change because, whether they believe it or not, they don’t care about the consequences of ignoring it.
The super rich are, or believe they are, protected by their wealth from every catastrophe that is inflicted on the world, from wars and famine, to the worsening climate disaster and the fury of the millions whose lives will be ruined by it. Their homes won’t flood, their mansions won’t burn and even if one does, they’ll just take their private jet to one of their other ones. When drinking water becomes more expensive than the gold bullion that Farage is paid £280,000 to flog, they will hoard it and when clean air becomes even more scarce, they will trade it on the stock exchange. Too fanciful you think? Remember, the richest man in the world is already planning to bugger off to Mars after he has helped to bugger up the Earth.
Selling another lie
However, for Reform to keep coining in the moolah from the fossil fuel billionaires, they have to sell the policy to their followers. Convincing people that ignoring every credible scientist in the world while doing nothing to prevent a huge threat to their own grandchildren’s futures is a matter of patriotic principle has got to be tricky.
But, if they can persuade people that they can’t afford the things they see on TV because there are too many brown faces in the adverts for them, or that migrants who are literally banned from working are the reason their boss only pays them minimum wage, then perhaps Reform can pull this off as well.
However, surveys show that while Reform voters are more likely to deny the effects of climate change, they are also fairly indifferent to the issue. It remains very low on their list of priorities. On Reform supporting social media forums, you’ll find little discussion about the subject. When it does come up, it’s labelled a scam, and believing in it is somehow that worst of all things: woke.
Climate change denial as a strange form of patriotism
To encourage a bit more engagement and rage about the issue, many of Reform’s highest profile talking heads regularly attempt to suggest there is something fundamentally un-English about being green. When Darren Grimes (leader of Durham council, who have revoked the county’s net zero policy) apes Pastor Neimoller: “First they came for your car. Then your gas boiler”, he is literally comparing environmentalists to the Third Reich. His Facebook feed is well stocked with attempts to conflate green issues with the only things that his supporters actually get worked-up about, race and immigration, so we get: “While Labour and the Tories pander to net zero fanatics and open border hippies, Reform is standing up for the British people.”
These ideas have helped some Reform supporters to develop a strange sort of nostalgia for a time before the Namby-Pambys started going on about saving the planet, a mythical England where there were no foreigners and definitely no recycling. This amalgam of climate denial with a distorted form of patriotism would suggest that those who climb poles to vandalise cameras in London’s ultra low emission zone are using the same ladders the next night to hang a flag upside down from a lamppost.
Follow the money
While they’re raking in the cash from multimillionaires based abroad with fortunes invested in fossil fuels, Reform’s leaders know that they can’t allow their supporters to wake up to the irony that climate change and the horror it will inflict on the poorest parts of the planet will be a major driving force for world-wide migration.
But when you know that The Telegraph, which pays Nigel Farage £48,000 a year, is owned by a company with huge oil and gas interests along with the international investment arm of a petro-state, and when you realise that represents a tiny fraction of the donations Reform has received from the fossil fuel industry, you begin to wonder if they believe anything they say or if they are being paid by the word.
Cause and effect? A few possible reasons why Reform aren’t keen on net zero
