In just over a year, the British right-wing political party Reform, led by Nigel Farage, a man who rose to prominence at the head of the campaign to push the UK out of the European Union, has surged to the top of the polls. Fueled by a pervasive sense of national decline, Reform has advanced an agenda combining anti-migrant and anti-climate sentiment that feels oddly out of place in historically climate-conscious Britain.
If elected, Reform has promised to roll back climate legislation and block the development of solar farms in constituencies that they control. Ahead of the Scottish by-election in June 2025, Farage made his pitch to voters in Trumpian terms, enjoining the nation to “Drill, Scotland, Drill.” In that same speech, he also called net-zero the next major political fault line after the vote to leave the European Union.
The political backlash has gained momentum. The Conservative Party leader, Kemi Badenoch, pledged to ditch net-zero, while the ruling Labour Party is considering weakening climate targets and green policies.
This is in stark contrast to only a few years ago, when there was a substantial climate movement, broad political support for environmental policies, and cross-party support for climate legislation.
While public support in Britain for action on climate change is still strong, increasingly people are worried about the personal cost of a green transition. Three-quarters of Britons believe that climate policies will make them poorer, while 20 percent believe climate policies are bad for the economy. And despite the British net-zero sector growing far faster than the rest of the economy at 10 percent per year and supporting over 700,000 jobs, only one in five voters think the energy transition will create jobs in their area.
As in the United States under Barack Obama then Joe Biden, a raft of climate policies and funding were put in place in the UK after the 2015 Paris Accords, culminating in the adoption of a broad economic…
Auteur: Nik Beuret
