Guest election blog – Reform by Ruth Tingay

 I’m a conservationist, blogger, researcher and campaigner. I write the Raptor Persecution UK blog and a monthly wildlife crime column for British Wildlife magazine. I’m a past president of the Raptor Research Foundation, a founding member of the REVIVE coalition for grouse moor reform in Scotland and a co-founder and co-director of Wild Justice.

 I’m rarely swayed by specific manifesto commitments (with a few notable exceptions) and tend instead to vote for the party whose overall values align most closely with mine and whose representatives can demonstrate integrity and trustworthiness.

This is my review of, and my thoughts about, the environmental implications of the Reform UK election manifesto (although noting that Nigel prefers the term ‘contract’ to manifesto – whatever).

Things I like? I wasn’t expecting to find anything to be honest, but I did find a few. Although I daresay my reasoning about these policies is very different to Reform UK’s and any agreement we share is entirely coincidental:

• Scrap HS2 – Absolutely agree. This stunt has already caused monumental and irreversible environmental damage and has cost tax payers £billions. Dishonest claims about its benefits have long been exposed and debunked. Close what remains of this fiasco and use the funds to support urgently-needed public transport infrastructure across the country.
• Stop the release of sewage into our rivers and seas – An obvious crowd-pleasing statement given widespread national outrage about the current sewage scandal but the manifesto doesn’t provide any indication whatsoever about how this could be achieved, which makes it look nothing more than a shallow and calculated vote-winning exercise.
• Ban foreign supertrawlers from UK waters – I agree that supertrawlers should be banned from UK waters, not because they’re ‘foreign’ but because repeatedly dragging giant mile-long nets to catch hundreds of tonnes of fish (and everything else in its path) every day couldn’t ever be described as sustainable. The use of the word ‘foreign’ is superfluous here, although wholly in keeping with Reform UK’s general xenophobic outlook which I’d guess is probably more important to them than any deep-seated concern for the marine environment.

Things I don’t like:

• Scrap environmental levies; Scrap Net Zero and related subsidies; Scrap annual £10 billion of renewable energy subsidies; Start fast-track licences of North Sea gas and oil; Increase and incentivise ‘clean’ coal mining; Legislate to scrap EU regulations with immediate effect; Legislate to ban all ULEZ and Low Traffic Neighbourhoods; Scrap plans on selling petrol and diesel cars; Scrap legal requirements for manufacturers to sell electric cars; Scrap climate-related farming subsidies; Productive land must be farmed and not used for solar farms or rewilding; Stop Natural England from taking action that damages farmers; Protect country sports.

These aren’t environmental policies – they’re anti-environmental policies that are tone deaf. The scale of ignorance is shocking, even for this party. The word ‘reform’ is defined as ‘making changes [to something] in order to improve it’. Someone should tell Nigel.

Things that appear to be missing:

• Intelligence
• Credibility
• Logic
• Scientific understanding
• Any trace of environmental awareness or concern

Overall assessment:

Depressing, pitiful, idiotic, terrifying.

Would I vote for these environmental policies?

Hello? Is that Dignitas?…

This is one of a series of opinion pieces on the political parties’ 2024 general election manifestos. They were commissioned by Wild Justice several months ago by approaching a wide variety of conservationists and environmentalists long before the date of the general election was known. Some people who originally agreed to write pieces found the date and short timescale impossible and had to back out. We did not know what they would write and their only brief was to pick one or two political parties’ election manifestos and tell us what they liked and didn’t like about their environmental policies. We didn’t tell people what to write and we haven’t edited what they wrote (except to squeeze things into a common format, to correct minor grammatical and spelling errors and typos). The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Wild Justice.

If you think you could produce a review of one of the 2024 general election manifestos then we would need to receive it as soon as possible, but in any case before 26 June, in a similar format to that above, as a word file and with a .jpg or .png image of yourself, the author. Send any potential texts to admin@wj.samkilday.com and we will look at them. We’ll let you know if we want to publish your piece and we may be able to pay you a small amount for it.