If the polls are to be believed, Nigel Farage’s Reform UK is set to make significant gains in Thursday’s local elections, riding public discontent to victory in mayoral and local council seats, and possibly gaining a new member of Parliament.

While media coverage has focused on what this means for the political fortunes of Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, less attention has been paid to Reform’s policies, and what they would mean for local residents.

Farage’s party – which has received millions from polluting interests and is actively courting oil and gas donors – campaigns to ditch clean energy targets and open new fossil fuel projects, dismissing the threat from climate change.

Yet, as DeSmog has reported, many of Reform’s target seats are exposed to extreme weather caused by a warming planet.

Farage has also claimed that local councils – which have seen real terms funding cuts of 40 percent in recent years – are wasting money on climate policies.

He has vowed to set up “a British DOGE for every county and every local authority in this country”, a reference to U.S. President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency. DOGE has empowered unelected far-right billionaire Elon Musk to make sweeping cuts to public services, sack government staff on mass, and close whole departments with no oversight or transparency.

And it seems likely that Reform’s new local representatives will take inspiration from their colleagues in Parliament. Since winning five seats in last July’s general election, Reform MPs have used their platform to attack climate policies and spread false information about climate science.

Ahead of tomorrow’s elections, with climate action firmly on the ballot, DeSmog has reviewed and compiled the views of some of Farage’s key candidates.

Andrea Jenkyns – Greater Lincolnshire mayoralty

Andrea Jenkyns is a former Conservative MP who defected to Reform in November. She is leading the polls to become the first mayor of Greater Lincolnshire.

Jenkyns is also on the board of Net Zero Watch, the campaign arm of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), a notorious climate science denial lobby group.

Net Zero Watch has urged the government to “recommit to fossil fuels”, including “a new fleet of coal fired power stations”, and has called for renewable energy from wind and solar to be “wound down completely”.

Jenkyns, who has pledged to set up a “Lincolnshire DOGE” has personally spread climate science denial. In a 2023 piece for GB News, she wrote: “Carbon dioxide is not pollution; it is a naturally occurring trace gas essential to life on Earth. It is only one of many factors that might have an impact on the climate.”

She has also attacked climate policies, calling measures to reach net zero emissions “bureaucratic nonsense” which should be scrapped.

In a speech Jenkyns gave at Reform’s East Midlands conference in January, she said: “I say no to [Energy Secretary] Ed Miliband bankrupting Britain with his net zero madness” and “I say no to Lincolnshire being a dumping ground for pylons”.

A month later, at Reform’s annual conference, she asserted that “net zero has become a religion” for Labour and the Conservatives, adding: “I say yes to ditching net zero full stop.”

For more on Andrea Jenkyns, see her new profile in DeSmog’s Climate Disinformation Database.

“It makes perfect, stomach-turning sense that Reform UK, a party actively courting donations from the oil and gas industry, is also looking to slash climate policies.

“Climate disinformation and denial flourishes where fossil fuel money flows. This is why we need Labour to act now and lock fossil fuel influence out of our politics. Every politician with ties to oil and gas endangers our progress towards a just, fair and fast transition.”

Carys Boughton, campaigner with Fossil Free Parliament

Luke Campbell– Hull and East Yorkshire mayoralty

Luke Campbell is a former boxing champion who is currently leading the polls to be mayor of Hull and East Yorkshire.

In a local hustings on 25 April, Campbell said he was “all for” the goal of achieving net zero emissions by 2050 – a departure from official Reform policy – if it creates jobs. However, he added that he believes net zero is “not achievable”.

Net zero provides thousands of jobs in Hull and East Yorkshire, including at Siemens, which builds wind turbines.

Henri Murison, chief executive of lobby group Northern Powerhouse Partnership, told The i Paper he believes Campbell poses a “clear risk” to the region.

“He has set himself against net zero which goes against the interests of business in the region,” Murison said.

Campbell has said that his main priority as mayor would be to “cut council waste” – parroting Farage’s DOGE ambitions.

Arron Banks – West of England mayoralty

Arron Banks is a millionaire businessman who gave £8.4 million to the pro-Brexit Leave.EU campaign led by Nigel Farage and Reform deputy leader Richard Tice.

Banks is standing for West of England Mayor, which encompasses Bristol, South Gloucestershire, Bath, and North East Somerset, but is polling third behind the Green Party and Labour.

He has said that he will appoint a deputy to do the work if he wins, and has claimed that being mayor is a “meaningless job”.

As DeSmog has reported, Banks has repeatedly attacked basic climate facts. In January 2024, responding to Conservative MP Chris Skidmore resigning over the last government’s support for new oil and gas projects, Banks posted: “CO2 & climate change is the ultimate hoax.”

In December 2023, Banks made the familiar argument that the climate has always changed regardless of human emissions. He posted: “Climate change has been in constant flux since the planet was created. A miniscule amount of CO2 in the atmosphere isn’t the likely driver.”

In July 2021, he posted: “Net zero is the new religion for stupid people” and in April 2023 he said: “Net zero and climate change have all the hallmarks of a scam.”

However, the views of Reform UK and Banks don’t appear to match those of voters in the West of England.

Polling from the area in 2022 found that 65 percent of people supported net zero, while only 11 percent opposed the UK’s 2050 net zero target. And while Reform UK has pledged to strip renewable energy companies of state subsidies, an overwhelming 87 percent of people said they supported renewable projects in the local area.

“Any politician who makes the ludicrous claim that climate change is a hoax is not fit to hold public office,” said Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics. “Arron Banks might as well stand as a candidate for the Monster Raving Loony Party.”

Ryan Coogan – Cambridgeshire and Peterborough mayoralty

Ryan Coogan, who describes himself as having a background in “business, advocacy, volunteer work and as a councillor”, is standing to be mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, but is polling in second place behind the Conservative candidate.

Coogan’s election website claims: “Net zero policies are crippling Cambridgeshire’s economy – driving up energy costs and killing jobs. We need an approach that works for people, not bureaucrats.”

His list of key policies include: “support residents fighting against Ed Miliband’s disastrous net zero agenda”, “end net zero mandates” which he claims “destroy jobs and raise energy prices”, “scrap restrictions harming agriculture and business”, and invest in nuclear and hydrogen energy.

According to the BBC, Coogan has said he will oppose oppose solar and wind farms on “prime agricultural land”.

He has also promised to set up an Elon Musk-style “DOGE” drive for Cambridgeshire to tackle what he calls the local government’s “bloated bureaucracy”.

Alexander Jones — Doncaster mayoralty

Alexander Jones, a businessman and model who posts fitness content online, is standing to be Reform’s mayor in Doncaster.

Jones has claimed that Labour would “waste millions of hardworking taxpayers’s pounds on translators, cycling lanes, integration for asylum seekers, and the reaction to climate change”.

In social media posts in 2023 unearthed by The Telegraph, a social media account for Jones’s trading business expressed support for Andrew Tate, the misogynist influencer who is facing charges of alleged rape and sex trafficking in Romania. The social media account encouraged Tate to “keep fighting the good fight”.

Reform has said that neither the party nor Jones support Tate’s views.

John Falkenstein – North Tyneside mayoralty

John Falkenstein, a former council officer in the 1990s who has worked as a barrister, is standing to be Reform’s mayor of North Tyneside.

In a section of his election website titled “Net Zero Madness”, Falkenstein claims: “The UK contributes only 0.88 percent of carbon dioxide to the world’s atmosphere, and North Tyneside’s contribution to that is virtually nil. Reform UK agree we should move away from less sustainable forms of energy, but only as the technology and infrastructures develop, and economics permit.

“Our future economic prosperity should not be sacrificed at the altar of net zero.

“Net zero policies are crippling North Tyneside’s economy – driving up energy costs and killing jobs.”

He has pledged to “To stop all non-essential expenditure on these programmes unless they can be shown to be financially proportionate and meet a compelling need” in order to “balance the books”.

In reality, the UK’s net zero sector is growing at three times the rate of the rest of the economy, according to the Confederation of British Industry (CBI). The north east’s net zero economy is worth £2.3 billion, according to the CBI, and employs 31,800 people.

Sarah Pochin  — Runcorn and Helsby parliamentary by-election

Former Conservative councillor Sarah Pochin is thought to have a good chance of becoming the new Runcorn and Helsby MP. This would make her Reform’s fifth Member of Parliament, after Rupert Lowe was suspended earlier this year.

Pochin is a former employee of oil and gas major Shell, and has claimed that “Reform will scrap the billions wasted on net zero projects”.

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