LONDON — Nigel Farage’s Reform Party is being advised by a think tank which denies the science of climate change and claims the U.K. government wants to use electric vehicles to control its citizens.
Lois Perry, U.K. and Europe director of the Heartland Institute think tank, told attendees at Reform’s annual conference last week that she was “very grateful to be able to consult and influence the Reform Party at the highest level.”
The Heartland Institute confirmed to POLITICO this week that it has “held conversations with policymakers within Reform UK.”
The Institute — which is closely aligned with U.S. President Donald Trump’s anti-climate policies — has cast doubt on global warming and branded climate change policies a “hoax” and a “scam.”
Earlier this year it backed Trump’s decision to pull out of the U.N. Paris Climate Agreement and to roll back Joe Biden-era clean energy projects.
The organization was invited to an event in the White House Rose Garden when Trump announced plans to pull the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement during his first term in office in 2017.
“The reality is this, we’re not facing a climate crisis,” the organization’s President James Taylor told a Heartland-sponsored fringe event at Reform’s party conference in Birmingham Saturday.
He added: “We cannot have a climate crisis predicated on the notion of global warming when temperatures remain unusually cold.”
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is unequivocal that human-induced climate change is “already affecting many weather and climate extremes in every region across the globe.”
The organization launched its U.K. and EU arm in December, at a London event attended by Farage as well as former Prime Minister Liz Truss.
A spokesperson for Reform UK did not deny that the party had been in discussions with Heartland. “Reform UK meets with organisations from across the political spectrum with the view of developing a wide-ranging policy platform,” they said.
‘Have a look around you’
Speaking at the same conference fringe event, Perry — a former leader of UKIP — said: “There’s nothing wrong with CO2. CO2 is not a pollutant.”
She said that government net zero policies are “bad for the environment” and had been introduced “to control us. It’s to tax us. It’s to take our money and it’s to take our liberty.”
Perry added: “They want us in electric cars. Electric cars can be remotely controlled. Again, not a conspiracy theory. These cars can be shut down.
“Imagine during Covid. Imagine your car is disabled remotely. You have no control over it, because it’s an electric car. And that’s if you can afford an electric car. There’s a reason why this neo-Marxist, communist, shambolic government wants us in electric cars. It is so that we have no freedom whatsoever.”
One person linked to the Reform-friendly Centre for a Better Britain think tank said it had not yet met Heartland but would be happy to do so.
Earlier this month, Perry told Reform’s chairman Zia Yusuf on a Heartland online show that she had talked the party’s Deputy Leader Richard Tice into ditching net zero policies. “In that case, hats off and credit to you too,” Yusuf replied.
Reform has pledged to scrap the U.K.’s net zero target, promising this will bring down sky-high household energy bills.
This February, Farage also told an event it was “absolutely nuts” to claim CO2 was a pollutant. In 2024 he said he didn’t want to get into “any debate on the science.”
Tice has expressed views at odds with climate science. He owns a Tesla electric car, which he describes as an “amazing piece of kit.”
It comes as Reform UK — consistently topping the national polls — seeks to professionalize and present itself as a party ready for government. “I promised you a year ago, I would professionalize the party. Have a look around you,” Farage told conference attendees in his speech Friday.
Pollsters warned there were electoral risks for Reform in engaging with climate denial groups, at a time when voters are wary of all politicians’ aims with regard to net zero.
“The primary focus for all voters is energy costs,” said Julian Gallie, head of research at Merlin Strategy. “However, pursuing an anti net zero agenda motivated explicitly by climate skepticism can be as deep a turn off as those who are pursuing a net zero target regardless of price costs.”
Additional reporting by Dan Bloom.
The post The Trump-aligned climate skeptics advising Britain’s Nigel Farage appeared first on Politico.
