A climate campaigner challenged Reform MP and deputy leader Richard Tice at a financial event in London on 22 January.
She pointed out that the vast majority of Reform’s funding comes from sources linked to fossil fuels and climate denial. She also highlighted the risks from the climate crisis to Tice’s own constituency of Boston and Skegness.
Reform has taken in over £2.3m in donations from fossil fuel interests, polluters and climate deniers between 2019 and 2024. This is 92% of their funding during this period.
Richard Tice climate denier
Tice also recently argued that it is “absolute garbage” to claim that human activity is the main cause of climate change. Yet, 99.9% of scientific studies agree that human activity has caused climate change.
The woman confronting Tice also pointed out that his own constituency is actually one of the most climate-vulnerable areas in the UK, thanks to human-induced climate breakdown.
Despite Tice publicly criticising Net Zero, his own company Quidnet heavily invests in and profits from renewable energy. Tice even wrote in a 2022 report that these green investments provide “an attractive return for shareholders”.
The speaker also drew attention to Tice’s wealthy background. She questioned whether, as one of Reform’s figureheads, the fact he’s a privately educated multimillionaire, and grandson of property mogul Bernard Sunley, could harm his own claim that Reform is “the party of the workers”.
Robin Wells, director of Fossil Free London, said:
They called their party Reform, but they intend to do just the opposite.
Right now in the UK, ordinary people are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer. And Reform intends to keep it this way, or really make things much, much worse. Because they’re promising tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy, a double down on oil and gas, and are even pushing to resume fracking.
This is whilst our natural systems are breaking down, unable to cope with the fossil fuels we are pummelling into the atmosphere; and it’s affecting us now. An elderly woman drowned in flood water in her Derbyshire home, almost all of the trees in a Cornish beauty spot were destroyed this month in storms, and Tice’s own constituency is the second most exposed to global warming in the UK.
This wolf in sheep’s clothing will speed up climate breakdown and inequality. Because they work for big money and Big Oil. Richard Tice is a man of profit margins, and the people are not fooled.
Featured image via Fossil Free London
By The Canary
This post was originally published on Canary.