Net Zero could become the “next Brexit” and be the issue which wins Reform UK the next election, Nigel Farage has declared. The party leader laid out a vision for how the centre-Right can seize back the environment as a campaigning issue while ditching the Government’s drive to achieve net zero emissions.
Mr Farage revealed he had voted for the Green Party in the 1989 European election and said he cared “greatly” about habitats and the natural environment. But he said he was watching Britain “deindustrialising” as energy prices force up the costs on families and businesses.
He said opposing net zero could be the “primary issue” which wins his party the next election.
Mr Farage fired a shot at former Conservative leader Boris Johnson, saying he was perhaps the “worst of the lot” when it came to pursuing net zero with his ambition for the UK to become the “Saudi Arabia” of wind.
He said politicians and the media were gripped in a “mania” on net zero but predicted – as with Brexit – voters in the UK may set the country on a very different path.
“The scales are falling from people’s eyes,” he said.
Mr Farage accused the Government of “wilfully destroying” opportunities and industry around the North Sea. He said Britain could be a self-sufficient “energy exporter”.
Warning against erecting solar panels on land which could be used for agriculture, he said: “When you’re building solar farms on grade one land in Lincolnshire what in God’s name are you doing?”
He described fields covered in solar farms as “biodiversity deserts”.
He strongly supports exploiting Britain’s shale gas reserves, saying: “I do think for now fracking is absolutely vital.”
When asked if a Reform Government would scrap the ban on fracking, he said: “Abso-blooming-lutely.”
in the long-term, he argues nuclear is “the answer” to Britain’s energy needs.
Mr Farage suggested the centre-Right could reclaim “the argument about why nature matters without the CO2 obsession”.
He said: “I think this is one of the issues – maybe the primary issue – which will win us the next general election.”