Zia Yusuf Wants to be the UK’s Elon Musk

Reform UK leader and figurehead Nigel Farage hasn’t been alone in basking in the media spotlight of late.


Farage has been accompanied by his party chair, Zia Yusuf, a multi-millionaire tech entrepreneur who has helped to orchestrate Reform’s explosive rise.


Yusuf has overseen the party’s growth to over 200,000 members and 400 regional branches since he took the role in July 2024 – helping to propel Reform to a swathe of victories at last week’s local elections.


The party is now being sh...

Reform Chair Zia Yusuf Accused of ‘Power Grab’ Through New Constitution

Reform UK’s new constitution grants “extraordinary” levels of power to its chair Zia Yusuf, DeSmog can reveal.


The party rulebook grants the multi-millionaire tech entrepreneur extensive, largely unchecked authority to revoke memberships, set the party’s agenda, take emergency disciplinary measures, and suspend potential candidates – without any formal way to sack him.


DeSmog asked academics and expert campaigners to review Reform’s 17-page constitution, adopted in September. While the ne...

Joycelyn Longdon - "Technology is ancient – indigenous communities have always been technological"

Environmental justice technologist, researcher and educator Jocelyn Longdon on what our city can learn from indigenous wisdom and the environmental action of marginalised people.

Despite Trump’s rollbacks on American climate policy, Reform UK’s attacks on net zero and Labour's pledges to expand airports from London to Doncaster, new research has found that there’s still a “silent majority” of people across the world, from 80 to 89%, who want stronger action on climate change from their gov...

‘Like watching your house burn down’: Americans in Britain on the shock of Trump’s victory

Just before Donald Trump was elected in 2016, Kristin Tadlock-Hunter, 31, moved to London with her British spouse. She did a lot of canvassing for Hillary Clinton before she left. This time, all she could do was vote remotely. So, as the US went to the polls, she felt powerless.And when the result came in? “Devastated doesn’t cover it,” she says. “Really heartbroken. I think it’s a unique experience, to be an immigrant watching it from afar. It feels like you’re watching your house burn down fro...

Yorkshire Post ties to controversial Drax power plant draw accusations of media ‘greenwashing’

What happens to the credibility of a local paper when it takes sponsorship and advertising money from a “renewable” power plant whose green credentials have been widely questioned?

The Yorkshire Post Magazine’s readers could be forgiven for mistaking June’s congratulatory headline feature about Drax power plant, “Drax at 50: From titan of coal to greenest beacon,” for a real article.
The confusion starts with the magazine’s cover photo: a yellow-jacketed, helmeted Drax employee gazing up...

The rural mental health crisis in drought-stricken Klamath Basin is coming for the entire West

The last time conditions were as dry in the American West as they are in June 2022, it was at least 800 A.D., and possibly earlier. Charlemagne was king of the Franks. The Maori people were migrating on their earliest canoes to New Zealand. To vastly understate—the West Coast is parched, and (due to global warming) the parching trends towards permanence. Aquifers are draining down, and waterways are disappearing. At the end of March, the US federal government informed the agricultural communitie