Essay by Eric Worrall
Is DeSmog trying to provide reasons for ordinary Britons to vote for Farage?
Nigel Farage’s Reform Party Has Accepted £2.3 Million from Fossil Fuel Interests, Climate Deniers, and Polluters Since 2019 Election
The anti-net zero party has been bankrolled by oil and gas investors, aviation entrepreneurs, and those who reject climate science.
By Adam Barnett and Sam Bright
on Jun 4, 2024 @ 04:35 PDTReform UK has received more than £2.3 million from oil and gas interests, highly polluting industries, and climate science deniers since December 2019, amounting to 92 percent of the party’s donations.
…
In the past 12 months, Reform has received £200,000 from First Corporate Consultants. The firm is owned by Terence Mordaunt, a director and former chair of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), the UK’s leading climate science denial group.
…
“No political party should be taking any money from fossil fuel interests whatsoever,” Caroline Lucas, until recently the Green Party MP for Brighton Pavilion, told DeSmog.
…
Speaking on GB News in August 2021, Farage said that he was “very much an environmentalist” and that he couldn’t “abide things like plastics in our seas, pollution in our rivers.” However, on the issue of climate change, he added: “What annoys me though, is this complete obsession with carbon dioxide almost to the exclusion of everything else, the alarmism that comes with it, based on dodgy predictions and science.”
…
“The deniers are those who continually gaslight the public into thinking you can stop these powerful natural forces. We must use the energy under our feet, rather than send our money and jobs abroad.”
Read more: https://www.desmog.com/2024/06/04/nigel-farage-reform-uk-party-2-3-million-fossil-fuel-interests-climate-deniers-polluters-since-2019-election/
Imagine using anything former Green MP Caroline Lucas has to say as your yardstick for appropriate political conduct, after her censure for misuse of public resources for political fundraising.
DeSmog’s inference Farage is dancing to the tune of fossil fuel interests is absurd. It’s the other way around. Business people increasingly support Farage because they think Britain is being run by innumerate fools, who are leading the nation to ruin, and are clinging to the hope Farage will bring a return to Thatcher era economic sanity.
Anyone who ever met Nigel Farage in person knows straight away that Farage is not someone who compromises his principles.
I once had the privilege of a 20 minute one on one conversation with Nigel Farage. At the time Farage was campaigning hard in the leadup to a London Assembly election. I told him straight out I was leaving Britain, so there was no political advantage to be gained by talking to me. This was before I started writing for WUWT, so other than a few letters to the editor I didn’t have any public profile. But he found what I was saying interesting, so he hung out with me for 20 minutes and talked about politics. Farage is that kind of guy – human being first, politician a distant second.
DeSmog painting fossil fuel interests as universally unscrupulous and greedy is equally ridiculous.
Take Caudrilla Energy. Caudrilla CEO Francis Egan has been trying since 2007 to get a permit to extract the 6.5 billion cubic feet of frackable gas sitting under Lancashire.
Can you imagine hanging in there for 17 years with your business on hold, in the hope that one of the useless bureaucrats and politicians who infest Whitehall will find the guts to sign a piece of paper? Egan is not a young man, he’s near retirement age – he could die of old age before he gets that permit.
Does anyone seriously believe Egan slogged it out for 17 years, campaigning tirelessly to bring affordable energy to the British people, because he’s a greedy fossil fuel entrepreneur? He could easily have taken his skills and experience somewhere they would be appreciated, rather than waiting 17 years for a day which might never come.
Can you imagine how much lower heating bills would be, if some of those billions of cubic feet of natural gas were pushed into Lancashire’s gas network? People might actually be able to turn on their home heating without checking their bank balance first. I’m sure Egan can imagine this, and that this vision of a Britain where energy is affordable is what keeps Egan going – no other explanation makes sense.
DeSmog Blog also pushes the absurd claim that renewable energy is affordable.
People might have once fallen for the cheap renewable falsehood, but even with the far left government funded BBC in the green corner, the days when people in Britain took everything greens say at face value went up in flames along with their retirement savings, after prices went crazy following the Russian gas embargo.
If Caudrilla had been allowed to ramp up to full production a decade ago, if Britain was fully energy independent thanks to abundant supplies from local fracking, the Russian gas embargo would have had no impact on domestic British energy prices.
Farage’s Reform UK is the party with a rational plan to make Britain great again, by using fossil fuel windfall revenues to lower everyone elses taxes, and by flooding Britain’s gas network with affordable British energy, rather than exposing Britain to the uncertainties and high prices of the global energy market. No other mainstream British political party has a credible plan for achieving this. Perhaps we should thank DeSmog Blog for helping to publicise why a vote for Reform is a vote for lower home heating bills and better job prospects.
Related
