Here is the weather forecast from the Reform Party
Phil Topham, November 2025

When I was asked to write something about climate change and Reform, I thought it would be easy: Reform don’t believe in climate change, it’s a woke fantasy, net zero is a costly scam which will put hardworking people out of work etc. There are so many holes in their pitch that it will be easy to dismantle it.

But maybe not. On Question Time recently, Reform’s Deputy Leader Richard Tice stated that the climate has always been changing. True, but not anywhere near the rate which is being driven by the emissions of human activities. He quickly moved on to jobs and no-one - panel or audience - took him up on the half-truth from which his subsequent claims were made. In fairness, most programme formats do not allow for sustained challenge of ‘facts’. Net zero, for example, is a scientific concept but media people generally do not have a scientific background or training in evaluating scientific evidence. And climate scientists would make mincemeat of most politicians in conducting a reasoned argument about the evidence (which may be why they are not always welcome in government). If we are to have a useful political debate about climate change and all its scientific relations, we need to agree on what they mean.  

We know that political campaigning is as much about emotion as rational thought but no truly democratic party subsequently governs on the basis of “I feel like invading Greenland today”. So it is important to invite more respect for the evidence from the people representing Reform in formulating and justifying their policies. If they agree that the climate is changing (as it always does but maybe a bit more now), what policies are they going to put in place to help people affected by the current (naturally-occurring if you say so but still rather large) climate impacts?  Believe in it or not, they still have to respond to it. Both of these points – agreement on terms and respecting evidence – suggest a different approach to political debate than we are used to. And maybe why, for example, Citizens’ Assemblies which combine expert knowledge with diverse viewpoints, are experienced as useful tools of democracy.

A second observation is that Reform’s position on climate change comes from their manifesto and its expression by elected members and party spokesfolk, quite a small group at the national level. However. global surveys show that around 80% of people are concerned about climate change and would like something done about it. It turns out  that Reform voters are statistically quite normal:  polling for the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit conducted the week of the 2025 local elections found that more than half (54%) of voters who planned to vote for Reform UK supported “policies to stop climate change and put in place targets accordingly to keep the UK on track”. Of the issues that determined their voting decisions, only 12% selected energy policy and 4% climate change and environmental issues. Furthermore 60% said green and low-carbon industries are the best way for the UK to regrow its industrial base. Thus Reform voters and its party elite differ substantially on climate change. I guess the difference doesn’t matter to the elite if climate change doesn’t matter a lot to Reform voters. But it does matter a lot to the majority of voters so it is important for other parties and the media to engage the Reform elite in constructive conversations about responding to climate change – starting, perhaps, with agreement as above.

Climate change does not matter to Reform voters nearly as much as immigration (66%), health care (39%) and the economy (39%). Yet all of these have the potential to be adversely or positively affected by how we respond to climate change. For example, a report from the Confederation of British Industry showed that the net zero economy was worth nearly £84bn in value to the UK economy and grew 10% in the last year. And we are hearing more about the health impacts of climate change (e.g. heatstroke, trauma, anxiety) together with the benefits of adaptation (reduced pollution, healthier lifestyles, new occupations). But the big bogie for Reform Central is migration.  

It is perhaps not surprising that the conversation has not got beyond small boat crossings as it may suit Reform to keep it like that, a simple answer to a complex issue. A fuller and more ethical answer would consider that, in parts of the world where climate change is increasingly causing unliveable conditions, people are moving to survive and to find a living elsewhere. As with other populist arguments, there is some truth in the Reform concerns: with predictions of 1.5 billion people on the move by 2050 (United Nations International Organisation for Migration 2021), migration will be one of the major challenges of this century.   In this light, it is deeply worrying that politicians of all parties have not made stronger and more public links between climate change and migration, both as threats and as opportunities.

Phil Topham, November 2025