After months of bragging about membership figures, their leader cosplaying as a farmer, and moaning about the so-called woke mob, Reform have finally put forward an actual policy – and its gone down like a lead balloon.
For the first time since last year’s general election, Nigel Farage’s party have actually come up with a policy of there own, aimed at tackling the energy crisis and rising bills.
Reform has suggested adding taxes to renewable energy companies, adding taxes to farmers who put up solar farms, banning battery energy storage systems and banning all new pylons by forcing new grid infrastructure to be buried underground.
The suggestions all play into their anti-net zero rhetoric, which seems to be rapidly morphing into full-scale denial of climate change.
But the policy has angered pretty much everyone, as it would almost certainly lead to energy bills actually going up.
Writing for LBC, Max Anderson, Head of Communications at the Conservative Environment Network, labelled the policy “an economic disaster.”
He wrote that Reform had hoped the policies would be a “series of popular pledges to stop controversial local infrastructure ahead of the May elections.”
Instead, it has placed them “firmly in a minefield of anger,” to the extent that the proposals have “already been downgraded to ‘direction of travel’ rather than official policy.”
Anderson continued: “These policies have angered everyone from passionate environmentalists, to die-hard free-marketers, to even net zero sceptics all questioning the logic.
“If you want to make energy bills more affordable, you cannot add taxes to existing energy. All retrospective taxes on renewable energy would do is chill investment in future projects at a time when we need more domestic energy, leading to further shortages and in turn higher bills.”
He concluded: “Energy bills are too high and must come down. But, Reform’s first stab at policy instead of just rhetoric has failed at the first hurdle. Whatever comes next, this will almost certainly cast a long shadow on their policy credibility.”
Even net zero sceptics have hit out at the policy…
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