Tories ditched net zero policy while receiving donations from oil investors and climate deniers

Badenoch’s party has been receiving money from fossil fuel interests while pursuing anti-climate policies.

The Conservative Party scrapped a key climate commitment in the same period that it received £250,000 from oil investors and climate science deniers, I can reveal today.

In March, while speaking at an advertising agency that works for the fossil fuel giant Shell, Tory leader Kemi Badenoch announced that her party would no longer be campaigning for the UK to reach net zero emissions by 2050.

Meanwhile, during the months running-up to this announcement, the party received a hefty sum from individuals with fossil fuel interests, as well as the chair of a leading anti-climate campaign group.

New Electoral Commission records released today show that the Tories accepted £50,000 in January from Neil Record, who provided funding and office space to Badenoch’s leadership campaign last year.

Record is the chair of Net Zero Watch – the campaign arm of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), the UK’s foremost climate science denial group. The GWPF regularly contradicts even the most basic climate science, suggesting that CO2 emissions are “not pollution”.

A month before Badenoch announced her party’s change of heart on net zero, Record also paid for the Tory leader, her family, and some of her shadow cabinet members to have a week-long “residential” on his Gloucestershire estate.

During the first quarter of this year, the Tories accepted a further £117,600 from Alasdair Locke, who made his fortune in the oil industry, and £75,000 from Lord Michael Spencer, a billionaire financier and former party treasurer who’s an investor in two fossil fuel companies.

So, while business groups report that the net zero economy grew by 10% last year, Badenoch is going around claiming that climate action is economically ruinous.

In reality, the clean energy transition is only ruinous for her party’s bank balance.

Reform’s Missing Millions

The new Electoral Commission records also gave us a glimpse into Reform’s income during the first quarter of the year.

While we’re still digging through the donors, it looks like Farage’s big promises have once again failed to materialise.

After claiming in January that it had raised over a million from donors at a glitzy Mayfair fundraiser, with Reform treasurer Nick Candy promising millions more, the party was forced to rely on the generosity of its deputy leader Richard Tice, who provided over a-third of its income (£613,000).

In fact, if the Electoral Commission records are to be believed, Farage’s startup raised just £1.5 million from donors during the period – less than both Labour (£2.3 million) and the Tories (£3.3 million).

It’s also interesting that Farage hasn’t given a penny of his own money to the cause, despite earning millions a year. Perhaps he isn’t a true believer in his own bullshit after all.

About me

I’m an investigative journalist and current affairs writer who has worked with the New York Times, the Guardian, the Mirror, the New European, Novara Media, New Statesman, Led By Donkeys, and others.

I specialise in exposing dark money and radical right-wing ecosystems.

I also write a lot about inequality and elitism, and am the author of two books on those very subjects: Fortress London, and Bullingdon Club Britain.

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Trump, Musk and Farage are on the march – followed closely by Badenoch and an increasingly radicalised Conservative Party. Investigative journalism exposing their funding sources, their plans, and their networks has never been more important.