LONDON — Nigel Farage’s Reform UK is surging in the polls. Buoyed by a trip to Washington for Donald Trump’s inauguration, the populist leader boasts he will be the U.K.’s next prime minister.
Now he and his insurgent party, best known for staking out populist positions on immigration and cultural issues, have found a new way to gun for the Labour government: net zero.
The U.K. is embarking on a “clean energy sprint” to bring down its carbon emissions, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband has promised, which means investing billions in green tech as well as moving rapidly to approve vast solar and wind farms and ban new gas drilling licenses.
Green advocates say this is much-needed global climate leadership. Miliband’s political opponents paint it as expensive and divisive at a time when hard-pressed voters want the government to back off from their lives.
Farage spies a political opportunity. “I think net zero is going to be an absolute catastrophe, electorally, for Labour,” he told the BBC in December.
The rush to go green is “going to be a defining feature of the debate, I think — the political debate, locally and nationally, from now until the next election,” Reform Deputy Leader Richard Tice told POLITICO in an interview.
That will be, in part, because his party puts it there.
Miliband’s policies make him “the most dangerous man in Britain,” Tice told the party faithful at a rally this month. Fellow Reform MP Lee Anderson, speaking at the same event, branded Miliband “a lunatic.”
Up and up
Reform — which delivered five MPs to parliament in last summer’s general election — has pledged to scrap the country’s legally binding target of net zero carbon emissions by 2050 and ditch subsidies for clean tech companies. It backs more drilling for planet-warming fossil fuels in the North Sea.
Tice said recent flooding in the U.K. had “nothing to do” with climate change — a view sharply at odds with climate science.
These positions are not shared by voters, the majority of whom believe climate change is one of the biggest issues the country faces. They broadly support ministers’ plans for big, climate-friendly investments, according to polling by YouGov. Parties like the Greens, which have even stronger climate goals than Labour, also made gains in July.
“It is definitely true that Reform voters prioritize climate change less than other groups of voters, but they also don’t vote Reform for that reason,” argued Luke Tryl, director of the think tank More in Common.
Instead, the party has found a way to weaponize green policy by tying it to an issue on which the government is already vulnerable: Sky-high energy bills.
Labour frontbenchers, including Miliband, pledged during the election campaign to cut bills by up to £300 a year. Instead, energy costs have increased steadily since they took office and are set to rise again this spring. (Labour is now reluctant to repeat the £300 commitment.)
Tice, whose party finished second to Labour in 89 seats last summer, is alive to the political opening. “It [net zero] is driving up bills,” he said. “January’s bill’s gone up, April’s bill is going to go up.” If bills don’t fall like Labour promised, “people are going to be very angry,” he predicted at the end of last year.
By contrast, Reform’s net zero policies would save “over £30 billion pounds a year of taxpayers’ cash,” Tice claimed. The party did not respond to repeated queries about how it arrived at the number.
‘Do people feel it is affordable?’
Experts agree that moving away from volatile fossil fuel markets is key to cutting energy costs in the long-term. U.K. bills, while they include green levies, have been driven up mainly by soaring global gas prices since 2022. The transition to net zero will create a “more affordable and fairer energy system for consumers,” the International Energy Agency said.
But that involves complicated policy trade-offs around those levies — which push up electricity costs to pay for other climate-friendly schemes — and overhauling electricity market pricing.
In the meantime, said Tryl, Labour could leave the door open to Reform if ministers do not find a way to get bills under control.
“This is a question which is a lot less about Reform and much more about: ‘Does [the green] transition go well and do people feel it is affordable, that it is being fair, that it is giving us energy security?’” he said.
“If Ed Miliband’s department manages to deliver that, there won’t be an ‘in’ for Reform,” Tryl added.
But if Farage and co. can land their attacks, their approach follows a populist playbook in Europe and the U.S., where ambitious green policies have come under attack for their impact on voters’ lives. Former President Joe Biden poured billions of dollars of Investment into clean tech jobs — but it did not save his party from defeat at the hands of pro-fossil fuel Donald Trump.
Labour nerves
Labour MPs understand the risk, said one person familiar with government thinking, granted anonymity to speak candidly.
“I think it’s right to feel nervous if we don’t get bills down. But there’s every reason to believe that we will get bills down,” they said.
“No one’s under any illusion that we’ve got a fight on our hands with Reform on a range of issues … Absolutely, it’s not lost on us — the damage that increased energy bills did to the last government,” the same person added. Nonetheless, ministers are “making the right argument for voters,” they insisted.
Some MPs vulnerable to Reform’s rise will hope such optimism is well placed.
“Wages are low in South West Norfolk and costs are high,” said Terry Jermy, the Labour MP who pinched the seat from Conservative former Prime Minister Liz Truss in July. “So naturally people are very cautious about anything that might cost them money, and that includes measures to reach net zero.”
Reform came third in his constituency but trailed Jermy by less than 2,000 votes. He backs the green push nonetheless. Climate change will be “just as important in four years’ time, or of even greater importance,” he said.
More than bills
Reform is seizing on public disenchantment with other aspects of the green transition, too, including unpopular plans to build hundreds of miles of overhead electricity cables, crucial to hitting net zero goals.
Voters in his Skegness constituency are “furious, absolutely furious” about the prospect of new pylons, Tice said.
“I do think [Labour] should be worried, and I think Reform think [net zero] is an issue that they can make political hay with,” said Scarlett Maguire, director at JL Partners polling firm.
“They were keen to push this before the election. They’re keen to push it after,” she added.
People must “feel better off as a result of the changes that are happening,” said Bill Esterson, a Labour MP and chair of parliament’s Energy Security and Net Zero Committee. “People will support warmer homes, cleaner air and lower bills and the net zero that will follow. But the government must make [the] case for the practical benefits of its policies and take people with it.”
Green wedge
Reform isn’t just targeting Labour. There is a growing green wedge at the heart of Westminster and the party has set its sights on the opposition Conservatives.
“A quarter to a third of the existing [Conservative] parliamentary party would happily scrap net zero,” Tice said. “The rest are woke Liberal Democrats who think it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread — so they’ve got a massive problem.”
The Tories did not respond to a request for comment. Under new leader Kemi Badenoch — who calls herself a “net zero skeptic” — the party has shifted away from some of the green policies it adopted in government, disowning one of their party’s biggest legacies: signing the net zero target into law under Prime Minister Theresa May in 2019. That was “a mistake,” Badenoch said.
The government and opposition are both still struggling to get to grips with Reform, believes Tryl.
“I don’t think the other two parties have found a very good way of holding Reform to account in the way that they would one another,” he said.
One key thing for the government, he argued, is not straying into a “crouchy, defensive mode” when it comes under attack over net zero.
Tryl said: “If they’re going to beat Reform on this — [and] indeed if the Tories become more climate skeptic — [Labour] have got to be quite robust about: ‘This is central to our mission and making the country a better place.’”
Additional reporting from Leicester by Andrew McDonald.
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