If an election were held in the UK tomorrow, hardcore climate denier Nigel Farage’s Reform UK would likely win as the party is surging in the polls. This outcome – almost unimaginable just a few years ago – can trace its roots back to another once-fringe movement based in Alberta.

 Preston Manning, founder of the Reform Party of Canada, was hailed as a hero and an “inspiration” to Reform UK by Farage at their annual convention in September 2025, the Globe and Mail reported. It turns out bitumen is not the only hazardous export from Alberta. 

Farage fawningly introduced Manning and described the party he founded as “transformational”  and that it had “put Canada back on the right track.” Manning in turn received a standing ovation for his speech supporting Farage’s political party known for rage-baiting on immigration, opposing climate change action, and leading the pro-Brexit campaign to leave the European Union projected to cost the UK economy over £300 billion by 2035.

In a prerecorded interview, Manning gave his blessing to the Reform UK project. “Nigel, I carried the torch for Reform in Canada, I now hand that torch over to you and wish you and your people every success.”

Reform UK has so far absorbed eight elected members from the floundering Conservative Party, most recently the controversial former Home Secretary Suella Braverman who Farage previously described as “useless” and “absolutely pathetic”.

Manning’s Reform Party started as a fringe political protest in 1987 steeped in populism and Alberta grievance. Thirty-nine years and several name changes later, this political movement eventually came to power for ten years under former Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Reform’s culture of ill-informed anger also helped spawn dangerously deluded political shards including the so-called “freedom convoy” that occupied the Canadian capital during COVID, openly supported at the time by the current Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre.

Large portions of the governing United Conservative Party in Alberta seem sympathetic to separatist extremists now threatening to take the province into the arms of their MAGA-aligned allies. Even in his eighties, Manning continues to cast a shadow over Canada’s conservative movement through the Canada Strong and Free Network, formerly the Manning Centre for Building Democracy.

Reform UK likewise began as a rump protest in 1993 led by then-obscure agitator Farage under the name UK Independence Party. This far-right group stoked anger around immigration and the European Union. The Brexit campaign led by Farage became a case study in weaponizing social media platforms like Facebook to spread disinformation that helped sway the outcome. Recent polls put Farage within striking distance of becoming the next UK prime minister.

Similar tactics are now unfolding in Canada as emboldened Alberta extremists spread wild online claims on the supposed benefits of separating from Canada. Like Reform UK and Farage, Alberta’s angry political ecosystem can trace its roots to early agitation from their founder Preston Manning that continues to this day.

While allegedly retired, Manning still makes time to stoke dangerous grievances even as our country is menaced by the erratic Trump Administration. On the eve of the last federal election Manning wrote an opinion piece in the Globe and Mail warning that a democratic outcome not to his liking would lead to Alberta separation, a position described by one political commentator as “fundamentally disgraceful”.

Farage and Reform UK have another tie to Canada: Canadian rightwing influencer Jordan Peterson’s Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC). One of Reform UK’s new members of parliament, Danny Kruger, is a member of ARC’s advisory board. Other members include an executive and a partial owner of the climate denying outlet GB News that features Farage prominently as a presenter.

GB News frequently platforms climate science denial organizations and regularly undermines climate science and policy. At ARC’s conference in 2025, Farage dismissed the now scientific certainty that carbon dioxide is a dangerous climate pollutant as “absolutely nuts” despite admitting he knows little about climate science. 

Farage recently delivered a speech at an event hosted by the UK and EU branch of the Heartland Institute, the U.S.-based group at the forefront of denying the scientific evidence for man-made climate change. Investigative work by DeSmog and the Guardian documented efforts by Heartland to use European far-right figures like Farage to thwart EU climate progress.  

 Manning has his own record on climate delay. He founded the Manning Centre for Building Democracy, later renamed the Canada Strong and Free Network (CSFN), that remains a nexus of so-called climate skepticism. Former Conservative Cabinet Minister Joe Oliver is a board member, who recently claimed in an opinion piece published in the Financial Post that “climate science is not settled”, comparing the overwhelming consensus among experts to the “Spanish Inquisition”.

Other associates of the CSFN include economist Ross McKitrick who has stated, “the phony claim of 97 per cent [climate science] consensus is mere political rhetoric aimed at stifling debate and intimidating people into silence.” The CSFN was also a member as recently as 2021 of the U.S.-based Atlas Network, described by SourceWatch as “the Johnny Appleseed of antiregulation groups”.

While the populist parties spawned by both Farage and Manning enjoyed a recent upswell of support, the grotesque excesses of the Trump Administration have undermined this momentum. The Canadian Conservative Party seemed on their way to a resounding victory until Trump was elected in November 2024 and began openly musing about America annexing their closest ally.

DeSmog documented the multiple ties between Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre and MAGA-adjacent interests and the multiple Trump cronies that endorsed him. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s ham-handed outreach to Trump and his allies also did not aid her efforts to elect Poilievre, who lost not only the federal election but his own seat in parliament.

The popularity of Reform UK is also being impacted by Trump’s ongoing outrages. The President’s demand that Greenland be somehow ceded to the United States was unsurprisingly unwelcome in Europe, even among supporters of UK Reform. Farage’s tortured principles seemed to exist in a state of quantum superposition, voicing obedient support for Trump’s gambit while calling the President’s annexation threats “a very hostile act”.

Farage’s far-right political base is forgiving of their leader but perceived association with Trump – like Poilievre – could be his undoing. Projecting a public image as champion of the working class, Farage was recently revealed to rack up £151,000 in donor-funded flights to support Trump since entering Parliament.

Manning and Farage appear to relish political disruption. Viewing the ugly unwinding of America provides a preview of where this ideology ultimately leads. Perhaps voters in the UK and Canada will decide that a toxic state of perpetual anger is not where they want to go.