On the second day of the Reform UK conference, in the wake of an undercover investigation alleging party officials plotted to evade the law on foreign donations, the deputy leader, Richard Tice, addressed the audience. Within minutes, a banner appeared behind him reading: “Collect £5m, burn the planet.”
It was taken down promptly and Tice, who has repeatedly called on people to enjoy the summer’s five successive heatwaves and record drought, rolled on. As Reform members at the Birmingham venue applauded Tice, there was plenty of agreement with his views. “I enjoyed the heat this summer,” said Jeanette Bowden, of Bexley. “I don’t think people need telling to take care of themselves.” Her partner, James, added, without scientific backing: “Carbon dioxide was much higher in the past, it was 10 times higher than this during the ice ages. It’s not a human problem.”
Amid stalls offering simulated helicopter rides, gold as an investment, tattoos and discounts on rum, climate scepticism was common. “It’s overhyped,” said Yvonne, who did not wish to give a surname.
“I don’t believe the predictions,” said Jim Langford. “They told us Norwich would be underwater by now and it’s not Atlantis yet.” Ed Rennie, a former Labour councillor from north London, said the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had reduced some of its higher predictions.
But many of the same people who, like Tice, cast doubt on climate science, also criticised the government for failing to protect people against the hot weather. Bowden pointed to new-build houses. “They have really small windows,” she said. “That might be good in winter, but in summer it must be too hot, you can hardly open them. The government should not force this on people.”
Yvonne added: “The government were all on their holidays in the summer, not doing their jobs [to help people during the heatwaves]. Government should ensure there is clean water and sewage, but they’re not even doing that.”
Nicholas, another delegate who did not wish to be named in full, said air conditioning should be installed in all hospitals, schools, libraries and public buildings, and made more easily available for homes.
Langford said the government was “absolutely not” doing enough to help people cope with the impacts of extreme weather. “They’re not preparing us at all, they’re just wasting resources.” Beryl Kingsbury said people should take responsibility for their own safety during hot weather, but farmers needed help. “They should have more support, but this government seems to hate farmers.”
For Mark Henderson, a facilities manager who works mostly outside looking after three large yards, the government’s role should be to apply common sense to health and safety. “I wear a helmet all the time, which was very hot [in the heatwaves], but I don’t need it all the time. You should be able to relax those rules in hot weather, to make them task-specific,” he said.
The confusion among Reform supporters, explained Michael Jacobs, an emeritus professor of political economy at the University of Sheffield, was to be expected given the party leadership’s peddling of “myths and lies” over the climate. Voters often say they want contradictory things, such as high standards of social care without tax rises to pay for them, Jacobs pointed out. But on the climate, they face an even more intense bombardment from contradictory viewpoints, as parties of the right try to turn the issue into a culture war.
“It’s really incoherent to be in favour of adaptation but not [cutting greenhouse gas emissions], but it’s not surprising people think that, given what they’ve been told,” Jacobs said. “Tice and Farage have claimed net zero would be economically ruinous, which is simply wrong. They try to say the UK is acting alone in cutting emissions, also untrue. These are pernicious myths. They have obscured the scientific fact that net zero is the description of where you need to get to, to stop the climate crisis getting any worse.”
Party activists of all stripes – the people who come to conferences – also tend to have stronger opinions than a party’s voters. Polls consistently show that Reform voters are much less likely to deny climate science than their leaders, and large majorities would like to see renewable energy sited near them, despite opposition to renewables from the party leadership. And although Reform has railed against “net stupid zero”, a significant minority, roughly a quarter by some polling, remain in favour of the target. In contrast to the leadership’s stance, which is to scrap the North Sea windfall tax, about 70% want higher taxes on fossil fuels, according to a poll taken last year.
Labour’s climate minister, Katie White, said Reform was out of step with voters. “After the summer we’ve just had, outright climate denial is a pretty lonely corner of British politics,” she said, noting that the government was investing in flood and coastal defences, and in strengthening the response to wildfires.
“My plea to Reform members, MPs and their leadership is a genuine one: please don’t turn climate change into another culture war. Britain has always been at its best when we lead, invent and build. I want our country developing the technologies the world will need, backing British businesses and innovators, and protecting the people and places we love.”
Dissenting voices were hard to find among delegates, but there were occasional flashes of doubt. One younger Reform member, a 25-year-old candidate to be a councillor in the north-west, was unusual in being less certain of the leadership’s stance. “I’m not sure what they should be doing on the climate,” he said. “But I know I and my generation will have to live with it.”
