The Murdoch effect: How the right abandoned climate conservatism

Nothing bares the British psyche quite like a heatwave, where two consecutive days of sunshine are treated as a national triumph. The moment temperatures creep above 30C, newspapers abandon all restraint. Beaches become “Britain’s Costa del Sol,” filling a paddling pool becomes an act of patriotic defiance, and supermarket shortages of barbecue meat are treated like signs of national resilience.

“Hottest May day ever as mercury hits 35C,” splashed the Express this week, beside a beaming child at a Hertfordshire lido. Murdoch’s Sun, meanwhile, mocked water conservation advice under the headline: “PADDLING FOOLS!” after South West Water urged households to fill pools only halfway.

Certainly, water companies deserve scrutiny but what’s entirely absent from the coverage is the obvious question – why are Britain’s weather patterns becoming so extreme in the first place?

The answer, of course, is climate change, and what scientists describe as “climate whiplash,” that is rapid swings between prolonged drought and prolonged rainfall.

Across the world, these violent oscillations have intensified in recent decades. After the UK experienced its warmest summer on record in 2025, the winter of 2026 brought relentless rain, including 50 consecutive days of rainfall in parts of Devon and Cornwall, one of the wettest seasons on record.

Yet much of the British press treat these developments not as symptoms of climate instability, but as opportunities for weather hysteria. The focus remains on “glorious sunshine,” packed beaches, and joyless officials warning people to conserve water.

Even supposedly serious newspapers downplay the significance of the heat. The Times, also owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp empire, led with photographs of Bournemouth beaches packed “like the Costa del Sol,” focusing on Britons “flocking to the coast” and zoo animals eating ice lollies. Readers were told temperatures were “glorious,” while the reasons such conditions are becoming more frequent, intense and dangerous, were conveniently left out.

The Murdoch effect

Perhaps none of this should surprise us. Rupert Murdoch has long expressed scepticism towards climate action. Scientists have described the media baron as a “climate villain,” whose outlets consistently promote denial, distraction, and political inertia.

“It’s hard to think of another person who has single-handedly done more to muddy the public’s understanding of climate change,” said Dr Joëlle Gergis, a climate scientist at Australian National University.

“We have wasted decades debating the fundamental science in the media, when we really should have been focused on urgently implementing climate policies that will genuinely reduce emissions.

“Murdoch will be looked back on by historians as someone who used their media monopoly to influence the destabilisation of the Earth’s climate.”

Indeed, the impact extends beyond headlines. Media narratives don’t merely reflect public opinion, they shape it. They influence what voters fear, what politicians prioritise, and which policies become politically toxic.

That transformation is particularly striking because climate action wasn’t always politically divisive on the British right. For decades, there was broad consensus across the mainstream political spectrum that climate change was real and required serious action.

Even Margaret Thatcher, a science graduate, warned in the late 1980s about global warming, pollution and ecological destruction, delivering speeches to the Royal Society and the United Nations that the BBC later described as showing “crackling environmental passion.”

John Major supported environmental protections during his premiership. David Cameron attempted to modernise the Conservative Party around green politics, promising the “greenest government ever.” Even Boris Johnson, despite years of sceptical newspaper columns, ultimately embraced ambitious climate legislation ahead of COP26, building on Theresa May’s legally binding commitment to net zero by 2050.

Today, it’s difficult to imagine any of those leaders receiving fair treatment from the right-wing press.

From conservatism to culture war

Analysis by Carbon Brief found that UK newspapers published nearly 100 editorials opposing climate action in 2025, the highest number since tracking began in 2011. The hostility came predominantly from right-wing outlets such as the Sun, the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph. Renewable energy, net-zero targets and environmental regulations were increasingly portrayed not as long-term economic necessities, but as elite ideological obsessions imposed on ordinary people.

The attacks also became deeply personal. Carbon Brief identified 112 editorials targeting energy secretary Ed Miliband in 2025 alone, repeatedly mocking him as a fanatic pursuing a ruinously expensive agenda rather than advocating policies Britain itself once championed across party lines.

This hostility coincided with a shift inside the Conservative Party itself. Under Liz Truss, the government briefly lifted the fracking ban. Rishi Sunak delayed the phaseout of petrol vehicles and gas boilers while approving around 100 new oil and gas licences. Under Kemi Badenoch, the party has gone further still, openly questioning the viability of Britain’s net-zero commitments and proposing to repeal key climate legislation once championed by Conservatives themselves.

The right-wing climate denial ecosystem

Right-wing climate denial operates like a classic propaganda conveyor belt, a process we’ve explored before on RWW. A free-market think tank such as the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), long criticised for publishing material that downplays the seriousness of climate change, releases a piece of supposedly authoritative “research.” That report is then eagerly amplified by right-wing media  outlets and injected into the public discourse as fact, with little or no scrutiny.

In January this year, for instance, the IEA published an error-strewn pamphlet on ‘The Cost of Net Zero,’ which received prominent coverage across several newspapers, including a front-page splash in the Daily Express.

As the London School of Economics observed, the pamphlet was largely covered by political reporters rather than specialist environment or energy correspondents, meaning its fundamental errors went largely unchallenged.

America’s influence on Britain’s climate backlash

And the British climate debate is becoming steadily more Americanised, increasingly shaped by US-style right-wing populism.

For years, the US right has transformed climate change from a scientific issue into a cultural identity battle, driven by fossil fuel lobbying networks, partisan media outlets and libertarian think-tanks. That same infrastructure is now influencing British conservatism.

Nigel Farage and Reform UK have become central to that shift. Reform has abandoned even rhetorical support for climate consensus, framing net zero as an attack on ordinary people while promoting familiar climate-sceptic talking points, that climate change is simply natural variation, that CO2 is harmless because plants need it, and that emissions are insignificant because carbon dioxide forms only a tiny percentage of the atmosphere.

The language closely echoes decades of messaging developed by the American climate denial movement.

Investigations by DeSmog have highlighted growing links between Reform figures and the Heartland Institute, a US organisation that has described itself as one of the world’s leading promoters of scepticism about man-made climate change. Heartland has long enjoyed close ties to Republican networks and figures associated with Donald Trump.

Last year, Farage addressed a Heartland fundraiser in Chicago, encouraging the organisation to expand “across the Pond.”

Meanwhile, Reform allies have helped launch Heartland-linked initiatives in Europe alongside far-right activists and Trump supporters. According to DeSmog, Reform has also received millions in donations connected to fossil fuel interests.

The result is that Britain’s climate politics increasingly resemble the United States. Net zero is no longer discussed primarily in terms of energy security, industrial investment or scientific necessity, but as a symbolic battleground in a wider war against “elites,” regulation and liberal institutions.

And it’s dragged the Conservatives with it, where there is little daylight between Tory and Reform on climate policy, including repealing the Climate Change Act 2008.

The cost of climate scepticism

The irony is that Britain was once seen as a world leader on climate policy. Both Conservative and Labour governments understood that cutting emissions was not just about protecting the environment, but about energy security, economic stability and preparing for the future.

Now, that political consensus is starting to fall apart under the pressure of culture-war politics, fossil fuel lobbying, tabloid outrage and the growing influence of American-style populism.

Climate change doesn’t care whether newspapers describe heatwaves as “glorious,” whether columnists mock net zero, or whether politicians decide green policies are unpopular. The consequences continue regardless, hotter summers, wetter winters, rising food prices, overstretched infrastructure, and increasing pressure on water and energy supplies.

Most worrying of all is that such scepticism is no longer limited to the populist fringe. Just this week, Tony Blair urged Labour to scale back climate ambitions and move closer to Donald Trump, confirming the scale of how American-style climate politics has entered Britain.

More worrying still, Tony Blair’s comments this week, delivered in a highly critical essay on the current Labour government, have been criticised for parroting Donald Trump’s billionaire backers. Critics have pointed in particular to Larry Ellison, the Oracle billionaire and prominent Trump supporter, who has reportedly funnelled hundreds of millions of dollars into the Tony Blair Institute.

What began as Murdoch-driven tabloid scepticism is fast becoming mainstream political thinking, at precisely the moment serious climate action is most urgently needed, as Britain swelters in temperatures hotter than Hawaii and Athens.

Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead is author of Right-Wing Watch