Reform voters: getting the climate story right

Reform UK’s climate, energy and environmental policies are no secret.

They run on an explicitly anti-net zero ticket, have pledged to bring back fracking and want to scale up drilling for oil and gas in the North Sea. Two thirds of the party’s income is from donors with financial interests in fossil fuels. In some local authorities where they have gained power, they have actively tried to block or reverse clean energy policies.

Following the national elections held in Wales and Scotland, and local elections in some parts of England on May 7th, there are now many more people who can officially describe themselves as Reform voters than there were on May 6th.

But if the party’s positioning on environmental issues is straightforward enough, does the same hold for Reform supporters?

Reform’s climate & energy policies are ‘low salience’ for voters. Is this a good thing?

Polling by ECIU and More in Common in the days running up the May 7th elections confirmed a longstanding finding: most people do not vote Reform because of their policies to reverse or abandon climate change targets.

Only 12% of those who said they were intending to vote Reform cited these policies as a reason for their vote.

This is an example of low issue salience having a positive short-term impact: Reform’s positions on climate change are still not (yet) doing much work in influencing voter choices.

But a closer look at the data suggests a hazier interpretation – and speaks to the question of whether the ‘salience’ of climate change as an issue is still the right proxy for positioning people’s views on green policies.

The same poll – reflecting much wider research – found the top three (financial) concerns for voters were energy bills (62%), food shopping (61%) and fuel (petrol/diesel) prices (39%).

Each one of these concerns has a clear link to the costs created by our continued reliance on gas (the price of which is set on international markets), and the costs already being felt from climate impacts.

But that is not the story that the growing number of Reform voters will hear, as they gradually begin to tune into the rhetoric and positioning of their party on green policies.

Each one of these cost-of-living pinch points has a mirror story that can be told about the way in which green policies are pushing up energy bills, preventing farmers from using their land to grow affordable food, or blocking us from using our own source of energy in the North Sea.

People’s receptiveness to these ‘mirror stories’ (regardless of their veracity) are a different, more embedded way of capturing voter sentiment on green policies, and here we see some clear water between Reform voters and most other voter groups. For example, whilst only 24% of all voters pick ‘too many government climate change initiatives’ as one of the top three reasons for high energy bills, this rises to 55% among those who intend to vote Reform.

‘Net zero stupid’

The indicator most obviously flashing red is Reform voters’ opposition to the country’s net zero target: this is one aspect of Reform’s anti-green rhetoric that has certainly cut-through (the party’s preferred term is ‘net zero stupid’).

In Climate Barometer’s tracking of narrative excerpts in political and media discourse, there are some clear discrepancies between people intending to vote Reform, and other voter groups.

The challenge here is perhaps less about ‘changing minds’ on net zero, and more about showing how the worries these messages seek to weaponise (poorly insulated homes, a sense of industrial decline, and wealth inequality) can be positively addressed by climate and energy policies.

Our research shows this means linking net zero to the things that voters of all persuasions really do care about: an energy system that is more resilient to price shocks, and one in which ordinary households don’t pick up the tab for the costs of the energy transition. Strikingly, one narrative which Reform-backers are much more positive towards is a ‘green populism’-style message on who should pay for the costs of the transition to clean energy. 

Where Reform voters are warmer (than you might think) on green policies 

It isn’t a positive picture on net zero, but there are some green policies where Reform voters don’t look so different to other voter groups.

Partly, this is because the Reform voter base pulls in some quite different directions at the same time.

‘Rooted Patriots’ (a More in Common audience segment which is likely to include Reform voters) might not trust the promises and pledges of governments and campaigners on green jobs and global targets, but as Britain Talks Climate & Nature research shows, they engage with the practical, tangible benefits of green policies when they are evident locally, and worry about local environmental threats. ‘Squeezed stewards’ are a sub-group of Reform voters identified by Hope Not Hate – they care strongly about nature, and are open to green policies if they are genuinely fair. 

Climate Barometer data highlights several ways in which Reform voters are broadly in tune with the wider national picture (e.g. on support for local solar and wind farms, and the types of benefits they would want to see from this kind of development).

Opportunities & risks

Reform UK is unlikely to develop a sudden passion for net zero. But the low salience of their climate and energy policies for Reform voters creates opportunities as well as risks.

The risks are clear enough: Reform voters’ tendency to believe and agree with negative sentiment about net zero means they may be open to disinformation about (or simply ‘opposition’ towards) a wider range of green policies. Coupled with a hardening of antagonism towards environmentalism (and further reductions in self-identification as ‘caring about the environment’), the potential for deepening polarisation is real.

But the low salience of climate and energy policies for Reform voters also poses an opportunity to tell more persuasive stories about the benefits green policies bring, tapping into values like pride (in place), or the stability that comes from homegrown energy. 

These are widely shared values – not unique to Reform voters. 

Material improvements to how the near-term costs of the transition are shared are essential for any communication to land effectively in the current political and economic climate. But messages grounded in values like these – especially if delivered through place-based engagement by trusted and relatable local groups – still offer a pathway to building the support of Reform voters on green policies.