Nick Candy, the party’s treasurer, told the FT that the party is also looking to raise funds from British expatriates who can donate in their own name as well as rich foreigners with UK businesses.
Reform UK, which has repeatedly questioned climate science, is soliciting donations from oil and gas executives as it bids to shore up its finances.
The Financial Times has revealed that Nigel Farage’s party is seeking to secure donations from the fossil fuel industry. The paper also reports that Reform is ‘launching a drive to raise funds from wealthy offshore donors in low-tax jurisdictions including Monaco, the United Arab Emirates and Switzerland, taking advantage of Britain’s loose funding rules to bolster its coffers’.
Nick Candy, the party’s treasurer, told the FT that the party is also looking to raise funds from British expatriates who can donate in their own name as well as rich foreigners with UK businesses.
The paper goes on to add: “Reform was targeting donors in the oil and gas sector who were “very disillusioned”, Candy said, because of the high level of taxation the UK currently applies to the industry’s profits. Reform has criticised the UK’s net zero target, which Farage has said recently will be the “next Brexit”.
So much for being an anti-establishment party, Reform will be funded by rich oil and gas donors. Rather than being a party for the people, it’s a party for corporate interests.
Last month, a poll carried out by Deltapoll found that supporters of Reform UK are far more likely to believe that climate change isn’t real.
While 63% of the British public believe climate change is happening and is mostly as a result of human action, when it comes to Reform voters, less than half (43%) shared that view.
Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward
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