A new research group set up to support Nigel Farage’s Reform UK is run by investors with business interests in the energy and metals industries, DeSmog can reveal 

Resolute 1850 is reportedly being launched in the Spring to “support Reform with policy development, briefing and rebuttal”, according to plans seen by the Financial Times.

The think tank is focused on building trans-Atlantic ties and aims to seek funding from allies of U.S. President Donald Trump, tech interests, and “religious conservatives”. According to the Financial Times, the think tank has already raised over £1 million.

A version of this article was published by the Financial Times

DeSmog can now reveal that Resolute 1850 was set up by Mark Thompson, an investor with interests in metals, fossil fuels, and renewable energy. It is also backed by his business associate David Lilley, a senior metals trader and former Conservative donor who has given £200,000 to Reform UK since June.  

Thompson is a non-executive director of VSA Capital, an international investment and brokering firm with “deep knowledge across all aspects of mining and oil and gas”, according to its website.

However, he also holds interests in renewable energy. Thompson is the director of Godolphin Exploration – a mining company that claims it produces “metals for the green energy transition”.

VSA Capital trades in “transitional energy”, saying that it works in particular on battery storage – a crucial component in the rollout of renewable energy.

Lilley is also invested in renewables – owning a hydro power project in Scotland via a company called Allt Power.

These business interests conflict with the policies of Reform UK. The party, which often denies the science behind human-induced climate change, has proposed scrapping emissions reduction policies, removing subsidies for renewable projects, and banning battery storage systems.

Farage’s party is polling neck-and-neck with Labour ahead of the 1 May local elections, when it will be standing in council and mayoral seats across the country.

“Farage and his party often make the very dubious claim that they are in touch with the general public. Now it will be even harder for them to repeat that with a straight face, if they choose to take policy advice from a think tank run by commodities traders and mining magnates,” said Agustina Olivieri, head of campaigns at the Good Law Project.

Thompson was approached for comment. Lilley declined to comment.

Resolute 1850

Thompson incorporated Resolute 1850 Ltd. on 20 December – the same day that resolute1850.org was registered.

The Financial Times reported on 28 March that Resolute 1850 will seek to develop and test policy ideas for Farage’s party. The plans seen by the newspaper suggested that Resolute 1850 would formulate ideas about how to cut state services, oppose DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion), and “reform healthcare”.

Farage has previously suggested that the UK should move away from a state-funding NHS and should instead embrace an insurance-based system.

The group will be run by Jonathan Brown, the former chief operating officer of Reform UK. According to PoliticsHome, Resolute 1850 has met with Farage and his deputy Richard Tice in recent weeks, and has hired “half a dozen” staff ahead of its launch. The think tank will be based in Millbank Tower, Westminster, the same building as Reform’s headquarters.

A senior party figure confirmed to the Financial Times there was a plan to create a think tank and that they were involved in that plan.

The party responded by saying that it is “not associated with any think tanks”.

“We are developing policy internally with renowned experts in each field,” they added.

Despite their influence on policy, UK think tanks are not required to declare their funding sources, leading to accusations that they can be used as vehicles for foreign interests.

“Foreign money sloshing into a think tank with excellent access to senior UK politicians will be bad for our democracy,” said former Liberal Democrat MP Tom Brake, director of the campaign group Unlock Democracy.

“This is particularly true when think tanks are under no requirement to reveal whether they are getting their money from uber-rich industrialists or religious fundamentalists, with their own agenda. Think tanks are part of the lobbying industry and should be regulated accordingly.”

An opaque network of right-wing think tanks exists in the UK, based in and around 55 Tufton Street in Westminster. Although none of these groups are transparent about their funding sources, investigations have revealed that they have received millions in anonymous donations from the U.S. over recent years.

The owner of 55 Tufton Street is a Reform donor, while multiple Tufton Street think tanks held events at the party’s annual conference in September.

Extractive Investors

Thompson is a former partner at Apollo Management, one of the world’s largest asset management firms.

He currently sits on the board of VSA Capital, which has acted as a financial advisor and broker to a number of oil and gas companies.

And, despite his renewable energy interests, Thompson has publicly criticised the energy transition, posting in 2021: “Climate policy is legislating the end of CO2 emissions forcing the end of cheap energy production.”

Thompson’s fellow Resolute 1850 director David Lilley is the CEO of investment fund Drakewood Capital, which has a strategic partnership with VSA Capital.

Lilley is a major Reform donor, having given £100,000 to the party during the 2024 general election campaign, and another £100,000 this year.

DeSmog and The Mirror reported in June that Lilley’s companies own 12,000 hectares of farmland in the Stavropol region of Russia, in the south west of the country.

Lilley previously told DeSmog that he has been unable to sell the land due to “Russian state bureaucracy” and that he has written off the assets. “I utterly condemn Putin’s immoral and illegal invasion of Ukraine,” he added. “It has caused untold suffering and economic damage.”

Lilley has been a political donor for years, having given £580,000 to the Conservative Party and its candidates between 2013 and 2023, as well as £150,000 to the pro-Brexit Vote Leave campaign.

An experienced metals and mining trader, Lilley is the former business partner of Tory peer Lord Michael Farmer, whose son George is a major Reform donor.

Farage was himself a metals trader in the City of London in the 1980s before entering politics as leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP).

Reform’s Anti-Climate Politics

Reform campaigns to “scrap net zero”, extract more oil and gas, and reopen coal power plants.

The party has been campaigning ahead of the local elections on an anti-climate agenda. Farage has claimed that the UK’s policies to reach net zero emissions will be “the next Brexit”, and has suggested that Britain is “being deindustrialised through a moronic policy”.

In reality, the clean energy transition has the potential to develop new, fast-growing industries. According to the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), the UK’s net zero economy grew by 10 percent in 2024, employing almost a million people in full-time jobs with an average wage of £43,000 – £5,600 higher than the national average.

As revealed by DeSmog, Reform received £2.3 million from fossil fuel interests, polluters and climate science deniers between the 2019 and 2024 general elections – 92 percent of its funding during the period.

In January this year, Farage helped to launch a new UK-EU branch of the Heartland Institute, a notorious U.S. climate denial think tank.

Farage has described himself as an “environmentalist in the old school sense”. However, interviewed at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference in February, the Reform leader claimed it was “absolutely nuts” that CO2 is considered to be a pollutant, while admitting that he is “not a scientist”.

Farage’s deputy Richard Tice has also claimed that “CO2 is not poison; it’s plant food”.

Climate scientists at the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s leading climate science body, have stressed that “it is a statement of fact, we cannot be any more certain; it is unequivocal and indisputable that humans are warming the planet”.

A version of this article was published by the Financial Times