An investigation by DeSmog reveals that Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party, which campaigns on a populist, anti-net-zero platform, is heavily supported by a powerful network of wealthy donors and think tanks with deep connections to fossil fuels and climate science denial. Despite presenting itself as a grassroots movement fighting elites, the party received 92 percent of its funding from fossil fuel interests and polluters between 2019 and 2024, alongside significant promotion from billionaire-owned media platforms like GB News. This financial and media backing exposes how the party's populist narrative serves to protect elite energy interests while undermining crucial climate action.
**THE DAILY CRUSADER**
*Late Edition — Price Two Cents*
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### THE GREAT GREENBACK RACKET! Farage’s “People’s Movement” Unmasked as Puppet of Oil Barons and High-Society Swells!
**LONDON — A sensational exposé has rocked the halls of Westminster!**
They call it a crusade for the common working man! But behind the velvet curtain of Nigel Farage’s “Reform UK” party lies a shadowy syndicate of fat-cat financiers, coal barons, and gold-plated think tanks pulling the strings. While Farage beats the drum against green laws at his grand convention in Birmingham this week, a daring investigation by the ink-stained scribes at *DeSmog* reveals the cold, hard cash fueling this anti-climate racket.
#### THE CHICAGO JUNKET AND THE “BLACK GOLD” BATTLE CRY
Only last week, Farage took a sleeper car to Chicago to headline a swank gala for the Heartland Institute—a notorious American propaganda mill that claims global warming is nothing but pure bunkum. Standing before the high-rollers, Farage bellowed his battle cry: *“Drill, baby, drill!”*
His party, which snatched five seats in the July election and boasts a whopping 14.3 percent of the public vote, is marching to replace Labour as the main opposition. They claim they want to protect the pocketbooks of the working class by scrapping "Net Zero" and opening coal mines. But the greenbacks tell a different story!
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### FOLLOW THE DOUGH!
#### Ninety-Two Percent of Reform Funds Come from Smokestack Kings
Follow the money, and you’ll find it’s coated in oil! Between the 2019 election and the start of the 2024 campaign, a staggering **92 percent of the party’s bankroll**—a cool £2.3 million—poured straight from the pockets of coal magnates, polluters, and climate-skeptic sugar daddies.
* **The Mordaunt Money:** First Corporate Consultants, owned by Terence Mordaunt (the big-wig of the "Global Warming Policy Foundation"), handed over £200,000. Mordaunt insists that carbon dioxide is a dandy benefit to the planet, thumbing his nose at the science fellas who say it causes extreme weather.
* **The Hosking Hoard:** Financial speculator Jeremy Hosking pumped in over half a million pounds. His investment firm held a staggering $134 million in fossil fuels. Hosking claims it’s his clients’ cash, but the smell of petroleum is unmistakable!
“Like many far-right outfits, Reform is propped up by the oil trust, not the working stiff,” warned Georgie Laming, a campaigner against political extremism.
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THE BACKROOM ROLL-CALL: THE TORY DEFECTION
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Twelve top-hatted backers of Reform are former Conservative Party
donors! Three of Reform’s five MPs—including Farage and deputy Tice—
are former Tory boys who jumped ship. It’s the same old establishment
under a shiny new fedora!
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### THE SENSATIONAL WIRELESS MONOPOLY!
#### Millionaire Press-Barons Provide the Megaphone
You cannot pull off a heist without a megaphone, and the Reform gang has the loudest in town! Enter **GB News**, a wireless television station bankrolled by Paul Marshall, a hedge-fund kingpin whose firm has £1.8 billion tied up in oil majors like Chevron and Shell.
Farage, Richard Tice, and Lee Anderson are all pocketing eye-watering salaries—Farage alone registered nearly £98,000 a month—to broadcast their anti-green gospel on Marshall’s network. Meanwhile, Rupert Murdoch’s media empire and the grand old *Telegraph* keep the printing presses hot with columns from Farage and his associates.
“The oil trust isn't just choking our lungs—it’s poisoning our news-sheets and our politics!” cried Richard Wilson of the *Stop Funding Heat* campaign.
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### THE CABAL OF TUFTON STREET
In the smoky backrooms of 55 Tufton Street—a Westminster property owned by Reform donor Richard Smith—the intellectual blueprints of this anti-green racket are drawn. At their Birmingham convention this week, Reform is hosting think-tank eggheads from the Policy Exchange, an outfit historically greased by ExxonMobil.
This comes hot on the heels of Farage’s recent chinwag on the moving pictures with Canadian pundit Jordan Peterson, who laughed off the climate crisis as "idiot apocalypse-mongering" and claimed CO2 is good for the Earth. Farage blamed global warming on sunspots and underwater volcanoes. Pure applesauce, say the world's foremost scientific authorities!
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### THE INTERNATIONAL SYNDICATE
This ain't just a British caper, folks. Farage is hand-in-glove with radical elements across the globe:
* **The American Connection:** Farage is a darling of the U.S. Republican crowd, cheering on Donald Trump and cozying up to the Heritage Foundation—the architects of "Project 2025," a plot to gut America's environmental watchdog, funded by the multi-million-dollar Koch and Mellon oil fortunes.
* **The European Ring:** Farage has been hobnobbing with Hungary’s strongman Viktor Orban, whose allied think-tanks are funded by the Hungarian state oil giant, MOL.
* **The Russian Bear:** Reform donor David Lilley, who gave the party £100,000, owns 12,000 hectares of farmland in Red Russia! Lilley admits he’s "made no secret" of his assets in Moscow, though he claims he can't sell them due to the Kremlin's grip.
The curtain has been pulled back, and the machinery of the Great Anti-Green Crusade stands exposed. Will the British public buy Farage’s "people’s movement," or will they see it for the high-society oil racket it truly is?
*Read more on page 4: "Is Your Coal Cellar Funding the Next Election?"*