Reform: UK should follow Trump and quit UN climate bodies
POLITICO - Thursday, January 8, 2026LONDON — The U.K. should follow Donald Trump’s example and quit the United Nations treaty that underpins global action to combat climate change, the deputy leader of Reform UK said.
Richard Tice, energy spokesperson for Nigel Farage’s right-wing populist party, said the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the linked U.N. climate science body the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were “failing British voters.”
Asked if the U.K. should follow the U.S. — which announced its withdrawal from the institutions, plus 64 other multilateral bodies, on Wednesday — Tice told POLITICO: “Yes I do. They are deeply flawed, unaccountable, and expensive institutions.”
The 1992 UNFCCC serves as the international structure for efforts by 198 countries to slow the rate of greenhouse gas emissions.
It also underpins the system of annual COP climate conferences. The U.S. will be the only country ever to leave the convention.
Reform UK has led in U.K. polls for nearly a year, but the country’s next election is not expected until 2029.
A theoretical U.K. exit from the UNFCCC would represent an extraordinary volteface for a country which has long boasted about global leadership on climate.
Under former Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the U.K. hosted COP26 in 2021. It has been one of the most active participants in recent summits under Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
It was also the first major economy in the world to legislate for a net zero goal by 2050, in line with the findings of IPCC reports. Tice has repeatedly referred to the target as “net stupid zero.”
The U.K. government was approached for comment on the U.S. withdrawal.
Pippa Heylings, energy and net zero spokesperson for the U.K.’s centrist Liberal Democrat party, said Trump’s decision would “make the world less secure.”