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.
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. 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.
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.
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. 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.
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