Nigel Farage’s Reform UK is attempting to raise money from the fossil fuel industry, the Financial Times has revealed.
The newspaper reports that Reform UK treasurer Nick Candy – a billionaire property developer – has been launching a drive to raise funds from wealthy offshore donors in low-tax jurisdictions including Monaco, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Switzerland. Expatriates registered to vote in the UK can donate to UK political parties, as can foreign individuals with a business in the country.
Part of this drive has involved soliciting donations from oil and gas executives. Candy told the Financial Times that an energy executive had donated £100,000 to the party last week, and pledged to give up to £1 million. Candy added that Reform was targeting oil and gas donors who are “very disillusioned” with current UK government policies.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer yesterday said: “homegrown clean energy is in the DNA of my government”, as he pledged to accelerate the transition from fossil fuels to renewables. While the UK’s oil and gas reserves are dwindling, the country’s green economy grew by 10 percent in 2024.
By contrast, Reform advocates for clean energy policies to be scrapped, including cancelling the UK’s commitment to achieving net zero emissions by 2050.
“This is textbook Nigel Farage,” said Ami McCarthy, head of politics at Greenpeace UK. “While he may enjoy cosplaying as a ‘man of the people’, in reality, Reform’s agenda is a shopping list of policies that will turbo-drive the profits of the very richest.
“Taking money from fossil fuel execs whilst pushing their misinformation will keep families tied to volatile oil and gas with sky-high energy bills, and further climate breakdown for our children and grandchildren.
“By going cap in hand to fossil fuel firms and millionaires in offshore tax havens, Farage is making it very clear who he’s working for: his elite mates, not us.”
Reform UK and its senior figures have repeatedly questioned basic climate science. Speaking at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference in February, while admitting that he knew little about climate science, Farage claimed it was “absolutely nuts” that CO2 is considered to be a pollutant. He also suggested on the BBC’s Today programme this week that climate change may not be caused by humans.
Farage’s deputy Richard Tice, who has donated substantial sums to the party in recent years, has claimed that “CO2 is not poison; it’s plant food”.
In reality, authors working for the world’s foremost climate science body, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), have said that “it is a statement of fact, we cannot be any more certain; it is unequivocal and indisputable that humans are warming the planet”.
The IPCC has also stated that carbon dioxide pollution “is responsible for most of global warming” since the late 19th century, which has increased the “severity and frequency of weather and climate extremes, like heat waves, heavy rains, and drought” – all of which “will put a disproportionate burden on low-income households and thus increase poverty levels.”
As revealed by DeSmog, Reform received at least £2.3 million from fossil fuel interests, polluters and climate deniers prior to the 2024 general election campaign – equivalent to 92 percent of its funding during the period.
“This is further evidence that Reform is copying Donald Trump and pretending that climate change does not exist,” said Bob Ward, Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics. “But the reality of making the UK more dependent on fossil fuels is that we would be more at the mercy of international markets and so would have energy that is more insecure, more unaffordable and more unsustainable.”
