Inside Reform’s conference: conspiracy theories galore

Walking around Reform UK’s conference on Friday 6 and Saturday 7 September, one thing was clear: the party is utterly unfit to govern.

Most peculiar was the unholy deification of its leader Nigel Farage, whose own financial interests were very much on display. Not only was GB News – Farage’s employer – given its own stand, but Direct Bullion – the gold bullion firm which has handed the Reform leader £280,500 for his work as a ‘brand ambassador’ – had a large stand in the centre of the arena.

In the corner of the main arena, was the construction equipment manufacturer JCB which might be hoping for custom from Reform controlled councils as they bulldoze Britain. While JCB continues to be a Tory donor, it has been generous to Farage, gifting him and a team member return helicopter flights last October worth more than £8,400.

The conference laid bare a party riven by internal divisions, extreme views, and, perhaps most notably of all, a swirl of conspiracy theories.

On Friday, the Antisemitism Policy Trust attempted to bring some sense to the conference, holding a fringe event on “the nonsense and racism behind conspiracy theories”.

Reform deputy leader Richard Tice was due to speak at the event but didn’t show up. The panellists – LBC political editor Natasha Clark, Antisemitism Policy Trust chief executive Danny Stone, and broadcaster and journalist Dr Matthew Sweet – explained why many conspiracy theories are rooted in antisemitism and the dangers of propagating them.

In a sign of worse things to come, the audience wasn’t entirely impressed. A Reform member called Rupert took the microphone to say that “there is a plan to have 15-minute cities”, about which he has “serious concerns”. Further pushed on the nature of this plan, Rupert told the panel: “If you read up on the Agenda 2030… there’s a lot of stuff in there and I don’t particularly like the look of it”.

There is no mention of 15-minute cities in the United Nations’ Agenda 2030. Both 15-minute cities and Agenda 2030 are common bugbears of fantasists who believe that government and/or international organisations are trying to control every aspect of our lives.

Another member, Anderson, explained that “logic is my background” before commenting: “One of the things I’ve got a conspiracy about is central bank digital currencies and obviously you could have predicted this plot from 1913.” He asked: “Would you say that central bank digital currencies are a conspiracy to get people to steal their wealth and have centralisation over their financial affairs?”

“No,” was Sweet’s crisp response.

Unfortunately, many of the speakers on Saturday didn’t heed Clark, Stone and Sweet’s warnings about the dangers of conspiracism.

It was at a fringe event on the Saturday morning, held by the Heartland Institute, a US based climate denial group, that some of the most outlandish theories were voiced.

The event, which took the form of a panel discussion about whether “climate realism” is inevitable, was chaired by Lord Christopher Monckton. Also on the panel was James Taylor (Heartland’s President), Lois Perry (Heartland’s UK & Europe Director), Andy Mayer (chief operating officer of the Institute of Economic Affairs), and John O’Connell (chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance).

Lord Monckton – who, as HOPE not hate pointed out last week, called homosexuality “gravely dangerous” in 2021 – arrived early for the event and his presence was a matter of great excitement for many in the audience. A number of Reform members went up to the homophobic aristocrat for pictures, including Brendan Mallon, one of the party’s councillors in Shropshire.

The tone of the panel discussion was rather set by Lord Monckton’s introduction, in which he referred to Mayer, of the right-wing IEA, as a “leftist”.

First up to speak after Lord Monckton was Taylor. “The reality is this: we’re not facing a climate crisis, there is no way we could be facing a climate crisis,” declared Taylor in his tub-thumping speech. 

Later in the discussion the Heartland President asserted: “The climate change agenda is not about the environment… it is a Trojan horse for socialism and communism.”

The reality, of course, is rather different. Climate change is real and there is unequivocal evidence that the earth is warming at an unprecedented rate. Not that that’s to concern Taylor.

After enthusiastically proclaiming, “Go Reform party,” Taylor handed the microphone to his colleague Perry, who was fresh from a champagne breakfast with Farage.

In something that should concern us all, Perry told the audience: “I’ve been very, very fortunate to be able to consult and influence the Reform party at the highest level and my organisation, the Heartland Institute, has been credited by our dear leader with actually being the people that have molded the policy on net zero.” Later in the discussion, she explained that “we’re advising our Trump… Nigel Farage”.

Her speech, greeted with applause and cheers from those in the room, exhibited wild conspiracy theories relating to climate change and electric cars. “It’s nothing whatsoever to do with the environment… it’s to control us all,” Perry confidently pronounced towards the beginning of her monologue, adding: “It’s to take our money and it’s to take our liberty.”

And then Perry’s claims became wilder still. She said:

“They want us in electric cars. Electric cars can be remotely controlled. Again, not a conspiracy theory. These cars can be shut down… There’s a reason why this neo-Marxist, communist, shambolic government wants us in electric cars. It’s so that we have no freedom whatsoever… They want to completely de-industrialise the West so that there is complete and utter Marxism… And net zero is this government’s horse of Troy.”

Asserting that “CO2 is not a pollutant” and climate change is “a scam”, Perry added: “There’s someone sitting in a white cage somewhere, stroking a white cat, literally laughing at us, saying: ‘We are charging them for the air that they breathe.’ Well, not any more, not any more!” There were whoops and cheers from the audience in response.

Once Perry had concluded her conspiratorial ramblings and both Mayer and O’Connell had spoken – and Lord Monckton had taken his chance to scoff, “at last we’ve discovered a use for Blackpool,” after commenting that there is frackable gas underneath it – the discussion was opened up to questions from the floor.

To ask the second question up popped none other than Reform councillor Brendan Mallon.

“We’re doing the right thing by going after net zero primarily, not after the science because that’s just a mess,” Mallon said, before explaining his rather ominous view of what should come next: “Once we win that battle – net zero’s killed dead – after that we do need to come after the science and the combination of dysfunctional scientists, media, NGOs, and politicians that have got us here, because this is not a trivial matter.”

Mallon asked: “Do we have truth and reconciliation or something even more robust to come after this, because we can’t go down this road again with the next scientific scare?”

In his response, Lord Monckton referred to climate scientists as “numpties” (unlike himself, of course) and said that all schools offer is “communist propaganda”. Shortly before that he termed the UK’s major broadcasters the “Marx-stream media”, called broadcasting regulator Ofcom the “Office for Communism”, and said that Reform would have to get “rid of the BBC”.

When the aristocrat asked the audience to cheer if they thought the BBC should stay, the room was silent, but when he asked whether they agreed with getting rid of the broadcaster the noise was almost deafening.

Following the Heartland Institute’s conspiracy-ridden panel discussion, right-wing campaign group The Together Association held its fringe event in the same place.

Part way through the event Farage stormed into the room, surrounded by his security detail, to declare: “I just wanted to say that I’ve been supporting Together very, very strongly… I frankly think that what we were put through with the lockdowns was the worst decision made by a peacetime government probably in British history. The lies we were told, the lies we were told. Told that if you get the jab you can’t pass the virus on, it wasn’t true.”

“I know you’ve got a star panel of speakers over there, so enough from me, I’ve got to move on, but good luck to you and I’m absolutely with you,” Farage proclaimed before swiftly exiting.

The next “star panellist” to take the stage was the controversial doctor Aseem Malhotra, a keen propagator of misinformation regarding the Covid-19 vaccines.

“Those people who stood their ground, despite all the coercion, to not get vaccinated will turn out to be heroes and on the right side of history,” Malhotra told the audience, who clapped and cheered.

Later that day, Malhotra would go on to cause controversy, by using his speech on the conference’s main stage to air claims that Covid vaccines were “a significant factor in the cancer of members of the royal family”. Professor Brian Ferguson of Cambridge University explained that Malhotra was indulging “meaningless pseudoscience” as “there is no credible evidence these vaccines disrupt tumour suppressors or drive any kind of process (biomedical or otherwise) that results in cancer”.

Unfortunately, the fact that Reform’s conference was a hotbed of conspiracy theories and theorists is no surprise. HOPE not hate has pointed out on numerous occasions the bizarre and wild theories being propagated and voiced by Reform candidates and elected politicians.

Just last week, we revealed that Simon Marcus, the party’s policy chief, has depicted society as being manipulated and brainwashed by an ill-defined set of shadowy global elites into accepting the Covid vaccine, believing in the climate crisis, and supporting Ukraine.

Reform should do better, but we aren’t surprised they didn’t.