Farage and Reform: climate fallout from local elections has begun

Nigel Farage’s party is on the rise. In the local elections, Reform took 31% of contested seats to Labour’s 14%. In fact, Keir Starmer managed to lose 65% of the up for grabs seats that Labour held, the most of any new prime minister. Of course, this would be a resigning matter if Jeremy Corbyn were still leader of Labour, but we hear barely a peep over Starmer’s historic losses.

Farage: you best “give up” on tackling the climate crisis

Reform’s local election success is already putting a lot at risk. Deputy leader and multi-millionaire landlord Richard Tice said Reform-led councils will block renewable energy infrastructure:

We will attack, we will hinder, we will delay, we will obstruct, we will put every hurdle in your way. It’s going to cost you a fortune, and you’re not going to win. So give up and go away.

Yet analysis shows that in Greater Lincolnshire renewable industries contribute £980m to the economy and provide 12,209 jobs.

While renewable projects are subject to national oversight, Reform can delay or block smaller projects. Alex Wilson, a Reform member of the London Assembly, has said renewables are “absolute lunacy” and are “sacrificing our economy”. He continued:

It’s making our bills more expensive. We have the highest electricity costs in the Western world, that’s had a huge impact on industry, it’s why the automotive industry is on the floor, it’s why the chemicals industry is suffering. The impact of net zero on energy prices, on industry, on people’s bills, is absolutely catastrophic. It’s a big part of the contribution to the results we had on Thursday’s elections, ten councils we now control and another four that we’re the largest party in them.

The idea renewables are more expensive than fossil fuels is the real source of lunacy. Government contracts for offshore wind energy have been under 5p per kilowatt hour. That’s less than a quarter of typical household electricity bills that consumers are facing. A renewable energy transition would not only address spiralling climate disaster, it would greatly bring down our energy bills.

But it’s no wonder Reform are taking such a stance. DeSmog research shows Farage’s party has accepted £2.3 million from fossil fuel interests, big polluters and climate deniers since 2019.

Wilson also said:

What we are against is giving up vast swathes of prime agricultural land for these huge solar farms. We want to make better use of our own natural resources to continue to provide the cheap and reliable and secure energy supplies going forwards, so oil, gas, going to keep using those.

Gas is not cheap. On top of that, Common Wealth notes we have spent £12.5 billion through bill payments to fossil fuel firms for them maintaining their ‘capacity’ in the last ten years. In other words, we rent gas companies for their existence for literal billions – just for them being ‘available’ to sort out supply issues.

Solutions?

Starmer, meanwhile, isn’t taking the opportunity to deliver a publicly owned Green New Deal. And he opposed landmark legislation that would make the UK’s targets to tackle the climate crisis emergency legally binding. He’s also investing almost three times more in carbon capture schemes that don’t work than he is in actually funding renewable energy.

Still, it’s better than Reform who are accelerating rapidly in the completely wrong direction.

At the same time, Green Zack Polanski is standing to be Green party leader. He wants to challenge Farage on a platform of ‘eco-populism’. All the best to him: it could be the only way out of the political hellscape.

Featured image via the Canary