Last week’s general election handed power to a Labour government committed to climate action, and four seats for the Green Party for the first time.

But it also saw the election of five MPs from Reform UK, a climate science denial party led by right-wing populist Nigel Farage. Reform campaigns to “scrap all of net zero” and backs new fossil fuel extraction, including via fracking and opening new coal mines. 

Reform’s policies are in step with its donors. DeSmog has previously revealed that since the 2019 general election, Reform received £2.3 million from climate deniers, polluters, and fossil fuel interests – who represent 92 percent of its funders. 

The party’s leaders Farage and Richard Tice have also worked as presenters on GB News, a right-wing broadcaster whose biggest investor Paul Marshall holds £8 million of shares in fossil fuel companies via his hedge fund Marshall Wace. 

Given its record and media platform, Farage’s party threatens to be a small but noisy voice trying to undermine Labour’s climate plans. 

Here’s a run down of Reform’s members of parliament and their record of climate science denial: 

Rupert Lowe – MP for Great Yarmouth (New)

Rupert Lowe, a former City trader who served as chairman of Southampton Football Club from 1996 to 2006, was a Brexit Party MEP from 2019 to 2020. 

Lowe won the previously Conservative seat of Great Yarmouth, with a majority of 1,400 votes over the Labour candidate, who came second. Lowe had failed to win a seat in February’s Kingswood by-election.

Lowe has a history of climate science denial, as DeSmog has previously revealed. In January 2020, when Lowe was a Member of European Parliament (MEP) for the Brexit Party (now Reform UK), he used a debate on bushfires in Australia, which destroyed more than 3,000 buildings and killed 34 people, to dismiss the role of climate change. 

“It’s disappointing that climate change has been blamed as the primary cause of these devastating bushfires by both our [European] parliament and other so-called climate experts”, Lowe said. 

“The cult of climate change marches on with no definitive evidence to support or deny the factual accuracy of their assertions. Logic suggests that climate change has little to do with this natural catastrophe.”

Lowe suggested the fires were caused by campfires, sparks from electric transmission lines, “discarded cigarettes” and “arson”. Blaming climate-influenced wildfires entirely on arsonists is a common trope used by climate science deniers. March 2020 analysis by the World Weather Attribution initiative estimated that the bushfires had been made 30 percent more likely by human-induced climate change. 

When challenged on his remarks during the session, Lowe repeated that the fires had “nothing to do” with “dryness or heat”, adding that: “We’ve had bushfires in Australia… for many centuries” and that “The biggest fires happened in 1974-75”. The claim that extreme weather has been worse in the past is another familiar climate denial argument. 

In May 2023, Lowe also appeared to defend physical confrontations with climate protesters. He shared a video on X of a man who was stopped by police for grabbing climate protesters, and said that it was a “scandal” that officers were confronting a person who was “doing their job for them” by “removing these climate loons from blocking up the roads”.

James McMurdock – MP for South Basildon and East Thurrock (New)

James McMurdock is a former banker at Barclays Capital, Goldman Sachs, and Lehman Brothers, who says he only joined Reform UK in May, a month before the election. 

Last week he was elected after a recount in the previously Conservative seat of South Basildon and East Thurrock, beating Labour by less than 100 votes. 

McMurdock does not appear to have spoken publicly about climate policy. But his decision to run for Reform suggests he backs their anti-climate platform. 

In a profile on Reform’s website, McMurdock describes his politics: “I am committed to the principle that there is no such thing as government money — only your money, collected through taxes. No politician can allocate your resources better than you can.” This is in keeping with Reform’s opposition to government-led green policies. 

Richard Tice – MP for Boston and Skegness (New)

Richard Tice is a multi-millionaire property developer who chaired Farage’s Brexit Party ahead of the 2019 general election and was one of its MEPs.

Tice led the renamed Reform UK party from 2020 until Farage took over last month, when Tice became chairman. In the general election, Tice won the Boston and Skegness seat, beating the Conservative candidate to second place by 2,000 votes. On Thursday, he was made Reform’s deputy leader. 

Tice has a long record of climate science denial. In November, Tice posted a video on X attacking climate policy, with the caption: “CO2 isn’t a poison. It’s plant food! We need to challenge the climate change nonsense!” In July 2023, Tice dedicated his TalkTV “sunday sermon” to the subject, in a monologue with the title “there is no climate crisis”.  

During the election campaign, (ahead of Farage’s return as leader), Tice appeared on BBC Breakfast and blamed climate change on “the power of the sun or volcanoes”.

Lee Anderson – MP for Ashfield (Re-elected)

Lee Anderson is a former Conservative MP who served as the party’s deputy chair in 2023. In January, while suspended for saying London Mayor Sadiq Khan was under the control of Islamists, Anderson defected to Reform UK, declaring: “I want my country back.”

Anderson has repeatedly attacked the government’s net zero policies. In September 2022, he signed an open letter written by the Net Zero Scrutiny Group (NZSG) of backbench MPs that was published in The Telegraph. It called on the UK government to green-light fracking for shale gas, and argued that gas projects should be “fast-tracked” in light of the energy crisis.

In July 2023, Anderson called the climate activist group Just Stop Oil “the biggest menace in our society” in an X post celebrating new oil and gas licences. 

In February, at the launch of Popular Conservatives – a new Tory faction run by Mark Littlewood, the former director of the BP-funded Institute of Economic Affairs think tank – Anderson said net zero “never comes up on the doorstep” aside from “the odd weirdo”. He also claimed that a net zero UK “wouldn’t make a blind bit of difference to the earth’s atmosphere”, because of other countries’ emissions. 

Nigel Farage – MP for Clacton (New)

Nigel Farage is a former city trader who led the UK Independence Party (UKIP) from 2006 to 2016, campaigning against immigration and European Union membership. On Thursday he was elected MP for Clacton, beating the Conservative candidate by 20,000 votes.

Farage has a long record of dismissing climate change. Under his leadership, UKIP manifestos pledged to rip up green measures, repeal the UK’s Climate Change Act, withdraw from the 2015 Paris Agreement, and support fossil fuel extraction.

In a 2021 appearance on GB News, Farage attacked “this complete obsession with carbon dioxide almost to the exclusion of everything else, the alarmism that comes with it, based on dodgy predictions and science”. 

The following year, during Farage’s self-described “retirement” from politics, he launched a campaign for a Brexit-style referendum on net zero, (a policy Reform did not include in its 2024 manifesto). 

During the election campaign, Farage spread open climate science denial. 

“We’ve had climate change for millions of years,” he said in a BBC 5 Live interview with Nicky Campbell on 14 June. When told, “Not at this rapidity”, he replied: “How do we know? Our scientific knowledge of this is very small.” In fact, climate scientists have concluded that global warming since the industrial revolution is “unparalleled”, and stated that the human role in it is “unequivocal”. Farage claimed in the same interview that “man produces about 3 percent of the CO2 produced in the world every year”. His claim was wrong by a margin of 30 percent.

The Reform MP has also spread conspiracy theories about climate policy. In 2023 on X, Farage warned that London’s ultra-low emission zone (ULEZ) would lead to “climate lockdowns” – a conspiracy theory about plans to impose Covid-style restrictions under the guise of tackling climate change.

Reform did not respond when contacted for comment. In May, a Reform spokesperson told DeSmog: “Climate change is real, Reform UK believes we must adapt, rather than foolishly think you can stop it.

“We are proud to be the only party to understand that economic growth depends on cheap domestic energy and we are proud that we are the only party that are climate science realists, realising you can not stop the power of the sun, volcanoes or sea level oscillation.”

In March, a spokesperson told DeSmog, “you know what our policies are towards net zero and the climate agenda” adding that it should come as no surprise when Reform is “supported by others that agree with us”.