Badenoch's break: swimming, donkeys and plenty of climate denial

Kemi Badenoch has been flip-flopping on whether the UK should support Donald Trump’s war in Iran, but she has been steadfast in one regard: lobbying for Keir Starmer to “drill, baby, drill” for more oil and gas.

Even before the war, Badenoch was a vocal proponent of more climate-boiling fossil fuels – a perspective that has only intensified following Trump’s bombing campaign.

This attitude is perhaps unsurprisingly shared by her major patrons and donors. These include Neil Record, a former currency trader and regular host of Badenoch on his country estate. New records show that Badenoch enjoyed Record’s hospitality again last month, when he hosted the Tory leader and four of her family members at a recorded cost of £7,500.

Record, who donated to Badenoch’s Tory leadership campaign, is something of a big name on the reactionary think tank circuit. He currently serves as the chair of Net Zero Watch, a climate science denial group which advocates for the scrapping of policies designed to reduce CO2 emissions.

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Record himself has called renewable energy investment “economic suicide”, despite the war in Ukraine costing £100 billion to the UK thanks to higher fossil fuel costs.

He’s also the life vice president of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), the think tank and lobbying outfit which spawned Liz Truss. As revealed by DeSmog, the IEA has received funding from the likes of BP, Shell and Rupert Murdoch’s media empire.

Speaking of the media, Record is also a columnist at the Telegraph and an advisory board member at the Prosperity Institute – the think tank backed by GB News’s co-owner, the Legatum Group. Small world!

Badenoch’s trip to Chez Record appears to be at least an annual occurrence. In February last year the Tory leader and a group of shadow cabinet members had a £14,000 week-long “residential” at Record’s estate in Gloucestershire, which boasts a swimming pool, donkeys and 180 acres of sheep-grazed grass.

This year it was only Badenoch who ventured to Record’s mansion – perhaps because all her allies are on the brink of joining Reform.