The fossil fuel ventriloquist act
How Reform councils delete climate language whilst banking climate cash
The internal email arrived on a Thursday morning in July, marked with the bureaucratic blandness that disguises radical instructions. West Northamptonshire Council staff were to begin immediately "reviewing and removing references to 'net zero'" from all documents and replacing "climate impact" with "environmental impact" across strategies, websites and reports. The directive read like something from a dystopian novel: climate change had become forbidden language.
Yet in the same building, on the same morning, council officers continued processing applications for millions in government green grants. Some Ā£13 million in climate-related funding already secured ā Ā£4 million for electric vehicle strategies, Ā£7 million to decarbonise leisure centres, Ā£2 million for warm home initiatives. The semantic shell game was complete: Reform councils would continue banking green whilst systematically erasing any mention of why the money existed.
This extraordinary exercise in linguistic gymnastics, revealed through internal emails obtained by Byline Times, exposes a sophisticated form of political arbitrage that extends far beyond semantic preferences. It represents a calculated strategy to satisfy contradictory constituencies ā fossil fuel donors who fund Reform's political operation, and cash-strapped councils dependent on government grants for essential services.
Reform's extraordinary dependence on fossil fuel money tells the real story behind the semantic games. Since 2019, a staggering 92 percent of the party's funding ā over Ā£2.3 million ā has flowed from oil and gas investors, climate science deniers, and high-polluting industries. This isn't broad-based grassroots support; it's a narrow coalition of vested interests.
Jeremy Hosking, the hedge fund founder whose investment firm held Ā£108 million in predominantly fossil fuel assets, wrote cheques totalling Ā£515,000. Christopher Harborne, who owns aviation fuel supplier AML Global, contributed Ā£465,000. Most tellingly, the Global Warming Policy Foundation ā Britain's most prominent climate denial organisation ā channelled Ā£200,000 through its director Terence Mordaunt's consultancy firm.
These aren't ordinary political donors. They represent industries whose business models depend on maintaining opposition to climate action. And they're getting remarkable value for money: not just votes against climate policies, but the systematic erasure of climate language from government itself.
These donors require visible political opposition to climate policies that threaten their business models. Reform has delivered with remarkable efficiency ā not merely opposing climate action, but systematically erasing the conceptual framework that justifies government intervention. When West Northamptonshire's chief executive instructed staff to remove climate references whilst maintaining sustainability work, the message was clear: keep the money, lose the rationale.
The American blueprint
This contradiction finds its most sophisticated expression across the Atlantic, where Republican governors have perfected the art of accepting federal green investment whilst campaigning against climate action. Texas politicians denounce renewable energy subsidies whilst their state leads America in wind power generation. North Carolina's Republican senators oppose climate legislation whilst their constituencies receive Ā£12 billion in clean energy manufacturing investment.
The pattern reveals climate denial not as principled opposition but as market positioning ā a strategy to capture fossil fuel donor support whilst maintaining access to the economic benefits of climate policies. When Republican districts receive the majority of green investment benefits, the contradiction becomes stark: representatives oppose policies that economically benefit their constituents to satisfy donors whose interests directly conflict with local prosperity.
Academic analysis of American renewable energy potential reveals the deepest irony. Rural districts across middle America ā overwhelmingly Republican-represented ā possess the greatest wind and solar resources. Yet these areas systematically elect politicians who oppose capitalising on their natural advantages. The very communities that could become America's renewable energy backbone instead choose representatives funded by the industries they could replace.
Reform UK has imported this model wholesale. Their councils systematically abandon climate language whilst rural constituents depend on green grants for energy efficiency improvements and flood defences. The semantic distinction allows politicians to satisfy fossil fuel donors whilst maintaining access to policies that benefit local communities.
The legal trap
However, semantic games cannot escape statutory obligations. The Climate Change Act 2008 establishes legally binding net zero requirements that create genuine legal jeopardy for councils abandoning coherent climate planning. Recent High Court judgements have already declared government climate strategies inadequate, finding ministers breached duties to adopt plans that "will enable" carbon budgets to be met.
Reform councils risk similar legal challenges by systematically dismantling climate frameworks whilst retaining statutory obligations for mitigation and adaptation. You cannot simply rename climate impact as environmental impact and expect legal duties to disappear. The contradiction between semantic solutions and legal requirements creates genuine vulnerability that opposition lawyers are already exploring.
Mark Wilkes, Durham's former climate lead under the previous Liberal Democrat administration, captured the legal absurdity perfectly: "It's economically illiterate. We took Durham to the best in the region at tackling climate-related issues and Reform are now doing their best to reverse the positive work we have been doing." The systematic abandonment of proven frameworks whilst maintaining legal obligations represents policy incoherence of an extraordinary scale.
The human cost
At Billing Aquadrome, mobile homes sit like boats after a storm. Flood damage from the latest deluge still marks the walls where families lost everything, again. These are the residents whose council has quietly abandoned climate adaptation planning whilst systematically purging the word "climate" from official documents.
Margaret Thompson, 67, has watched the water rise three times in five years. "They keep saying they're protecting us, but how can you protect people from flooding if you won't even say the word climate?" she asks, standing beside her caravan where the waterline still stains the walls.
Her neighbours depend on the same warm home grants that Reform councillors continue claiming whilst ideologically rejecting. The contradiction becomes stark when politicians funded by billionaire fossil fuel interests undermine climate resilience for working-class communities that voted for them as anti-establishment outsiders.
"It's completely duplicitous," explains one opposition councillor, "to abolish net zero mentions while taking solar and warm homes cash. When are we burning the books? Because that's what 'don't mention climate' is."
The arbitrage collapse
Political arbitrage operations typically prove unsustainable when arbitrage opportunities disappear. As climate policies demonstrate tangible local benefits ā job creation, lower energy bills, improved air quality ā maintaining ideological opposition becomes politically costly rather than beneficial.
American precedents suggest this contradiction cannot persist indefinitely. When renewable energy investment creates visible local employment and Republican districts begin outperforming Democratic areas in clean energy job growth, the political calculus shifts. Constituents notice the disconnect between representatives who oppose policies that demonstrably benefit local communities.
Reform's strategy reveals sophisticated understanding of this dynamic. By positioning themselves as reluctant beneficiaries rather than enthusiastic supporters, they maintain access to policy benefits whilst preserving political distance. The semantic distinction allows them to claim credit for green investment benefits whilst avoiding responsibility for supporting the underlying framework.
However, this political insurance policy faces systematic pressure. As climate impacts intensify and green investments prove their worth, maintaining opposition requires increasingly elaborate explanations. Why oppose policies that create local jobs? Why abandon flood defences when communities face repeated inundation? Why reject frameworks that demonstrably save councils money whilst improving services?
The broader pattern
Reform's climate strategy embodies broader tensions within populist politics ā the challenge of maintaining anti-establishment rhetoric whilst depending on establishment funding sources. When politicians funded by billionaire donors claim to represent ordinary people against elite interests, the contradiction becomes visible to voters who begin questioning whose interests are actually being served.
The fossil fuel industry's investment in climate denial represents a sophisticated attempt to maintain political opposition to policies that threaten their business model. By funding populist politicians who position themselves as anti-establishment outsiders, fossil fuel interests can oppose climate action whilst maintaining plausible distance from direct lobbying.
However, this strategy faces diminishing returns as renewable energy becomes economically attractive to precisely the communities Reform claims to represent. Rural areas with renewable energy potential increasingly recognise the economic opportunity that climate policies represent. When fossil fuel-funded politicians oppose policies that could revitalise rural economies, the contradiction between donor interests and constituent benefits becomes impossible to ignore.
Reform's semantic solution reveals the increasingly desperate measures required to maintain this contradiction. When accepting climate money whilst rejecting climate rationale requires systematic linguistic revisionism, the political position has clearly become unsustainable.
The great green con ultimately reveals the hollow core of populist climate denial. Strip away the anti-establishment rhetoric, and Reform's position exposes itself as sophisticated rent-seeking ā monetising opposition to policies whilst quietly banking their benefits.
Margaret Thompson and her flooded neighbours at Billing Aquadrome represent the human cost of this cynical calculation. They deserve councillors who prioritise community resilience over donor satisfaction, and honest governance over semantic games. When the next flood comes ā and climate science suggests it will ā no amount of linguistic revisionism will keep the water out.
The contradiction at the heart of Reform's climate strategy cannot hold. As renewable energy investment creates visible benefits and climate impacts intensify, the gap between rhetoric and reality becomes politically unsustainable. You can erase the word "climate" from council documents, but you cannot erase the climate crisis from the world.
Reform's fossil fuel donors may have purchased temporary political cover, but they cannot buy immunity from economic and physical reality. The great green con is ultimately a confidence trick played on Reform's own supporters ā and like all confidence tricks, it works only until people notice what's really happening.