Google, Meta, Oil Lobbyists and Anti-Abortion Groups Converge on Reform UK Conference

Picture a party conference where the guest list reads like a corporate lobbying directory crossed with a religious pressure group convention. That's Birmingham this week, where Reform UK is hosting its three-day annual gathering, and the roster of attendees tells you a great deal about who stands to gain from a Reform government.

Google, Meta, and TikTok will all have a presence at the conference, mixing with fossil fuel interests, far-right politicians, and Christian rights groups. It's an unusual coalition for a party that positions itself as a scrappy outsider movement. But scrappy outsiders don't typically attract this much corporate attention, or this many international dignitaries. Bloomberg has reported that countries including the U.S. and the UAE will send ambassadors to the event, which kicked off Wednesday.

Think of a party conference as a kind of trade show for political influence. Companies and advocacy groups don't sponsor panels and rent booth space out of civic duty. They show up because they want proximity to power, and because they're betting on who might hold it next. The betting here is curious, given Reform has slipped to third in the polls. Cary Mitchell, executive director of strategy at Best for Britain, put it bluntly: "It's no wonder Reform is slumping to third in the polls: the groups rushing to attend its conference are a reminder of how increasingly out of touch the party is."

Reform's positions aren't exactly moderate. The party supports the creation of Trump-style migrant deportation militias and wants to slash public spending by up to £300 billion a year. When DeSmog approached Reform for comment, the party rejected the outlet's media accreditation for the event and never responded to further requests.

Tech Money and Data Centre Ambitions

Meta's director of public policy and strategic partnerships, Sophie England, will speak Thursday on a panel about "the AI opportunity," alongside an image generation platform, a tech upskilling company, and Reform MP Danny Kruger, the party's head of preparation for government. The panel description promises AI "presents a major opportunity to unlock economic growth," language that echoes Kruger's own writing about backing a mass rollout of energy-hungry data centres across Britain.

Here's the problem with that enthusiasm: data centres are resource-hungry buildings, and their footprint is enormous. They've drawn intense backlash over their climate impacts and the strain they place on local water and power supplies. Meta itself is funding new gas plants to power its data centres, even as it quit a global renewables pledge. A Financial Times analysis found the 60 largest planned data centres in the U.S. could produce over 100 million tonnes of CO2 emissions a year, roughly 7 percent of the country's entire power-sector emissions. That's not a rounding error. That's a meaningful chunk of a nation's carbon output tied to facilities that primarily crunch numbers for AI models.

Meta has also backed Donald Trump financially, donating $1 million to his second inauguration and helping fund his controversial White House ballroom. Google made similar contributions, $1 million to the inauguration and $22 million toward the ballroom. Google will host an "AI academy" at the Reform conference, training councillors on its tools. Farage himself has received £21,590 since July 2024 from Google's content monetisation programme and £2,795 from Meta. TikTok, whose U.S. arm is co-owned by Trump-backing billionaire Larry Ellison, is sponsoring a session on political campaigning featuring Kruger and GB News's Christopher Hope, a channel that has paid Farage more than £700,000 as a presenter over two years.

Fuels Industry UK, the trade group representing BP, Shell, and ExxonMobil among its six members, will host an energy reception followed by a "price of power" event featuring Reform deputy leader Richard Tice. Tice has called for us to "celebrate" record summer temperatures and claimed there's "no evidence that man-made CO2 is going to change climate." That claim collapses under scrutiny. The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has stated it is "unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land," and that carbon dioxide "is responsible for most of global warming" since the late 19th century, driving more severe heat waves, heavy rains, and drought. Tice represents a constituency at high risk from climate impacts, which makes his denial all the more consequential for his own constituents.

A Fuels Industry UK spokesperson said the group "engages with political parties and policymakers of all persuasions," focusing on "informing policy debates with industry expertise and evidence." Cadent Gas, co-sponsoring the event, noted it attends conferences across the political spectrum, including Labour, the Conservatives, and the Green Party. Reform has received more than £24 million since 2019 from fossil fuel interests, more than two-thirds of its total income.

Anti-abortion groups are also on the agenda. The Christian Fellowship for Reform is hosting an event featuring Right to Life's Rupert Evans, whose group called the 1967 Abortion Act a "tragedy," alongside Simon Calvert of the Christian Institute and Andrea Williams of Christian Concern. Farage's ties to this movement have deepened. In September 2025 he testified in U.S. Congress against UK free speech rules, an appearance arranged by the Alliance Defending Freedom, the group that led the successful campaign to overturn Roe v. Wade. The ADF has reportedly brokered meetings between the Trump administration and Reform and supplied attack lines portraying Britain as hostile to free speech.

Kerry Abel, chair of Abortion Rights, warned: "Anyone who thinks what happened in the U.S. could never happen here needs to pay attention. Reform and the anti-abortion movement are trying to manufacture a culture war around abortion in Britain. We are watching an organised attempt to push anti-abortion politics into the mainstream."

Right-wing think tanks are also circling. The Prosperity Institute, created by the Legatum Group, a co-owner of GB News, is hosting four panels, including one with CEO Paul Coleman, Reform's economic spokesman Robert Jenrick, and policy head James Orr. Coleman previously led ADF International. Orr has told The Times he opposes abortion "at any stage of foetal development, even in pregnancies resulting from rape." The Adam Smith Institute and the Centre for Policy Studies, both part of the Tufton Street network long opposed to climate regulation, round out the guest list, alongside former Institute of Economic Affairs director Mark Littlewood.

Why It Matters

When corporations, fossil fuel lobbyists, and single-issue advocacy groups all converge on one party's conference, it's rarely a coincidence. It's a signal about whose priorities would shape policy if that party gained power. For ordinary voters watching data centre emissions climb, climate risks intensify, and abortion rights face fresh challenge, the guest list at a party conference isn't a footnote. It's a preview.