Oil Lobbyists, Anti-Abortion Groups, and Tech Giants Converge on Reform UK's Conference

When a political party's conference guest list reads like a map of the world's most powerful, least accountable interests, it's worth asking who that party is actually working for.

This week, Reform UK's annual conference in Birmingham will host Google, Meta, and TikTok alongside fossil fuel trade groups, anti-abortion campaigners, and far-right politicians including France's Jordan Bardella. It's a striking mix for a party that presents itself as a voice for ordinary Britons frustrated with the establishment. The company it's keeping suggests something different: a convergence of corporate power, culture-war politics, and climate denial, all courting influence over a party that could shape UK policy in the years ahead.

Fuels Industry UK, whose six members include BP, Shell, and ExxonMobil, will host an energy reception followed by a panel on the "price of power" featuring Reform deputy leader Richard Tice. Tice has called carbon dioxide "plant food" and claimed there's "no evidence" human emissions are changing the climate. That claim is false. The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world's leading authority on the subject, 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 1800s. Tice represents Boston and Skegness, a constituency ranked among the most exposed in Britain to climate-driven flooding and coastal erosion, according to insurer AXA. It's a bit like a ship's captain insisting the water isn't rising while standing in a flooding hold.

Reform has received more than £24 million in donations since 2019, with fossil fuel interests accounting for over two-thirds of that total. Fuels Industry UK says it "engages with political parties and policymakers of all persuasions" and focuses on "informing policy debates with industry expertise and evidence." Cadent Gas, co-sponsoring the energy event, noted it attends conferences across the political spectrum, from Labour to the Green Party.

Tech Money and the AI Push

Big Tech's presence is just as notable. Meta's director of public policy, Sophie England, will speak on a panel about "the AI opportunity" alongside Reform MP Danny Kruger, who has said a Reform government would back the mass rollout of data centres nationwide. These facilities are essentially giant, always-on computers that need enormous amounts of electricity and water to run and cool. Meta itself is funding new gas plants to power its own data centres, and a Financial Times analysis found the 60 largest planned facilities in the US could produce over 100 million tonnes of CO2 annually, roughly 7 percent of the country's entire power-sector emissions.

Google will run an "AI academy" training Reform councillors, and TikTok is sponsoring a session on political campaigning featuring Kruger and GB News's Christopher Hope. All three companies have donated to Donald Trump's political operations: Google gave $1 million to his inauguration and $22 million toward the White House ballroom; Meta gave $1 million to the inauguration and helped fund the ballroom too. Farage himself has personally received £21,590 from Google's creator payment scheme and £2,795 from Meta since July 2024.

These aren't neutral partnerships. When companies whose business models depend on light-touch regulation and cheap energy start training a party's elected officials and sponsoring its panels, the line between education and lobbying gets blurry fast. Think of it less as a classroom and more as a long-term relationship-building exercise, one that pays dividends when regulatory decisions come up for debate.

The anti-abortion contingent adds another layer. The "Christian Fellowship for Reform" will host Right to Life's Rupert Evans, whose group has called the 1967 Abortion Act, which legalised abortion in the UK, a "tragedy." He'll be joined by representatives from the Christian Institute and Christian Concern. Farage's own trajectory here is telling: for most of his 31-year career he stayed largely quiet on abortion, an issue with broad, settled consensus among British voters according to YouGov polling. That changed after his entanglement with the Alliance Defending Freedom, the American group that led the successful campaign to overturn Roe v. Wade. In September 2025, ADF orchestrated Farage's testimony to US Congress against UK free speech rules. Since then, he's called the UK's 24-week abortion limit "utterly ludicrous."

Kerry Abel of Abortion Rights put it plainly: "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."

Reform's head of policy, James Orr, reportedly opposes abortion "at any stage of foetal development, even in pregnancies resulting from rape," according to a Times profile. He works alongside Paul Coleman, CEO of the Prosperity Institute and former executive director of ADF International, who'll appear on a panel with Reform's economic spokesman Robert Jenrick. The Prosperity Institute, created by the Legatum Group, a co-owner of GB News, will host four panels over the conference's three days. It's joined by the Adam Smith Institute and the Centre for Policy Studies, both part of the Tufton Street network of think tanks that have spent decades lobbying against climate action and public services.

Why It Matters

None of this happens in a vacuum. Polling shows Reform has slipped to third place, and public opinion data from the ONS suggests growing discomfort with the party's direction. Cary Mitchell of Best for Britain argued the conference guest list explains the slide: "Brits clearly don't want Farage and co's divisive rhetoric or their regressive policies that would set us back decades." Whether or not that reading holds, the conference offers a rare, unfiltered look at who wants influence over Reform's policy platform, and why. Fossil fuel interests want continued extraction. Tech giants want light regulation and energy-hungry data centres approved without a fight. Anti-abortion groups want a foothold in a country where the issue has long been settled. When a party welcomes all three under one roof, voters deserve to know exactly what's being traded, and who ultimately pays the price for it.