Reform’s Dicey Ticey told Britain to enjoy the heat: Britain just told him where to go
A party funded by tens of millions from fossil fuel interests says enjoy the heatwave: new data shows Brits think otherwise
Britons have overwhelmingly rejected the idea that the dangers of a boiling summer have been overstated, according to YouGov polling published this week, days after Reform’s deputy leader Richard Tice urged people to enjoy the heatwaves and celebrate better English wine.
Just 21 per cent now think the threat has been exaggerated. That is the lowest figure YouGov has recorded in three years. Two thirds of the public, 67 per cent, say the threat is real, up four points since early June.
Ask people whether they fancy another scorcher and the answer is blunter still. As the air cleared on Britain’s sixth heatwave of the summer, only 25 per cent said they were hoping for a seventh. Sixty-five per cent said they were hoping it stays away, up two points on the end of July.
The environment now sits at 25 per cent as one of the top issues facing the country, up five points and the highest reading since January 2024. It is closing on health, on 26 per cent and the economy on 47 per cent.
Dicey Ticey pumps heat
Tice made his case at a press conference on Monday. “When it’s a bit warm, let’s enjoy it,” he said. “And if it means that English wine and sparkling wine gets better and better, fantastic.”
He also said it was “arrogant” to try to stop what is happening, and that the smarter move was to adapt.
Adapt to what, exactly? The government estimates 2,877 people died as a result of high temperatures during the May and June heatwaves. That is double the figure for the whole of last summer. Firefighters have been called to more than 1,000 wildfires. The National Farmers’ Union says growers are facing “one of the worst ever” harvests. The bill for lost economic output is put at around £4 billion.
Nurses were not in a celebratory mood. A spokesperson for the Royal College of Nursing said those calling for people to enjoy it “should say it to the nurses collapsing in hospitals where temperatures are hitting 36 degrees”, and to “the thousands of patients lining corridors every day”.
Simon Williams, a public health researcher at Swansea University, said it was “concerning to see someone so high profile spreading misinformation”. Older people, he pointed out, lose the ability to regulate their own body temperature. A few degrees decides who comes home from hospital.
Dodgy donations, polluting paymasters
Reform wants to scrap the 2050 net zero target and end clean energy subsidies. It has also taken tens of millions of pounds from people connected to the fossil fuel industry since it was founded in 2019. That includes £5 million from billionaire Christopher Harborne, who owns a jet fuel brokerage, a donation now sitting at the centre of a parliamentary inquiry.
Amy Cameron of Greenpeace UK put it plainly. A party “bankrolled by fossil fuel interests will keep denying the climate crisis for its funders’ benefit even when its impacts are undeniable”, she said.
Labour party chair Bridget Phillipson called the comments “tone-deaf”.
Ordinary people can read a thermometer
Here is the thing about lived experience. You cannot spin it. People who spent June and July in flats that would not cool down, on wards without air conditioning, in cabs and warehouses and fields, do not need a polling company to tell them what the summer was like. The numbers simply confirm what they already knew.
Tice’s other big suggestion on Monday was desalination plants, which he said work very well in the Middle East.
He would know. It is where he spends much of his time.