Nigel Farage and Reform UK’s deputy leader, Richard Tice, stood outside the Bank of England in London on 25 September 2025, projecting an image of defiance. But behind the rhetoric lies a stark reality: the party’s obsession with fossil fuels is a threat to British jobs.
The Net Zero Economy Is Booming
Claims that prosperity depends on oil and gas are bunkum, unless you are a Reform backer with fossil fuel interests. The net zero economy now directly employs more than 300,000 full-time workers and supports 1.1 million jobs overall. This sector is worth £100 billion to the UK and is poised to grow by hundreds of billions more. The broader green economy directly employs an additional 600,000 people.
Government Plans for Green Jobs
In October, the government announced plans to create another 400,000 jobs through its green energy plan, targeting people leaving the fossil fuel industry, school leavers, ex-offenders, veterans, and the unemployed. Training centres and colleges will be built in areas hit hard by deindustrialisation, offering a realistic path to a surge in skilled manual jobs.
Fossil Fuels: A Dying Industry
By contrast, the UK’s oil and gas industry provided only 27,500 direct jobs in 2023, supporting a total of 205,000. That is between one-tenth and one-fifth of the employment generated by the alternatives. These numbers have been falling rapidly for years; between 2016 and 2023, the industry shed 70,000 jobs despite new licensing rounds and tax breaks. The Rosebank oilfield, a cause célèbre for Reform and the Tories, would directly generate a mere 255 jobs over its lifetime.
Geology is unforgiving. Richard Tice claims there are “decades and decades and decades of gas in the North Sea.” In reality, even with new licences, UK gas output will fall by 97% from 2025 levels by 2050. New licences barely affect this trajectory, as so little remains. It takes an average of 28 years from approval to production, while wind and solar take around four. Reform promises fake jobs in a fantasy industry.
Reform’s Threat to the Green Economy
Reform and the Tories are competing to discover the outer limits of imbecility. Some Reform candidates deny climate science; Tice peddles conspiracy theories about scientists being afraid to speak. Kemi Badenoch has been criticised for false claims to support her abandonment of net zero. Even in opposition, these parties seek to sabotage the net zero economy. Tice wrote to eight major energy firms, threatening to “strike down” renewable energy contracts, warning investors that “the era of unquestioned liberal progressive orthodoxy is over.”
Labour MPs noted that such a threat would mean ripping up contract law. They could also point out that the UK is not in the western hemisphere, but geography, geology, physics, and law seem irrelevant to Reform’s fantasies.
Job Destruction Estimates
Transition Economics estimates that within the first three years of a Reform government, 500,000 jobs would be destroyed, rising to 1.4 million by 2040. The hardest hit would be oil and gas workers, who are being supported to move into renewables. Nigel Farage told Durham council workers with climate-related jobs to “seek alternative careers very, very quickly.” Why should multimillionaires care about other people’s employment?
The Real Agenda: Serving the Rich
Reform and the Tories pitch their attack on climate policy as hard-headed pragmatism, but they are trashing the jobs of practical people. They are romantics and fantasists dreaming of an impossible world. The facts are clear: choosing the dying industry over the growing one inflicts immense harm on the people of this country.
On whose behalf do they make this choice? Not their own voters, who strongly support renewable energy and net zero policies. Tice’s constituency, Boston and Skegness, is the most flood-prone in England, and many residents are incensed by his stance. Two-thirds of Reform’s funding comes from very rich people with interests in oil and gas. Reform is a party of millionaires working for billionaires.
The polls show Reform’s achilles heel is the perception that it works for the rich and powerful, not ordinary people. Spread the word: for the sake of their elite chums, they will throw you out of work.
