Rod Stewart branded ‘grotesque' amid support for Reform UK
In an interview with The Times, Sir Rod showed his support for Reform UK, sharing: 'I've read about (Sir Keir) Starmer cutting off the fishing in Scotland and giving it back to the EU. That hasn't made him popular.
'We're fed up with the Tories. We've got to give Farage a chance. He's coming across well. Nigel? What options have we got?
'Starmer's all about getting us out of Brexit and I don't know how he's going to do that. Still, the country will survive. It could be worse. We could be in the Gaza Strip.'
A post shared by Sir Rod Stewart (@sirrodstewart)
Sir Rod's comments come ahead of his Glastonbury Legends set on Sunday, June 29 and has sparked debate amongst his fans on social media.
Taking to X, formerly Twitter, one fan of Sir Rod wrote: 'To agree that Farage needs a chance is grotesque.'
Another comment on X read: 'Stupid thing to say' as a third wrote: 'Rod Stewart has come out for Farage? Oh mate.'
One more X user said they disagree with Sir Rod's comments but still respect the singer: 'No not giving Farage a chance, but respect what Rod Stewart has done and his career.'
A post shared by The Times and The Sunday Times (@thetimes)
In the interview with The Times, Sir Rod admitted that his wealth ensures 'a lot of it doesn't really touch me'.
Insisting that he is not out of touch, and expressed his support for Ukraine, criticising US President Donald Trump and Vice-President JD Vance for their treatment of Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky on his visit to the White House, and Gaza.
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'It's depressing, what's going on in the Gaza Strip,' he said. 'Netanyahu doesn't realise that this is what happened to his people under the Nazis: total annihilation. And Trump is going to turn the Gaza Strip into Miami?'
Stewart said a prolonged bout of flu, which forced him to cancel five shows in the US, nearly forced him to withdraw from a Glastonbury appearance he described to ITV as his 'World Cup final'.
He confirmed he will be joined at Glastonbury by former Faces bandmate Ronnie Wood, Simply Red's Mick Hucknall and Lulu, as well as performing the song Powderfinger by Saturday headliner Neil Young.
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BBC News
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The Guardian
an hour ago
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Meanwhile, the US president, Donald Trump, has withdrawn from the Paris agreement and is intent on expanding fossil fuels and dismantling carbon-cutting efforts. The EU is mired in tense arguments over its plans. China, the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, is rumoured to be considering weak targets that would condemn the world to much greater heating. And the attention of world leaders is elsewhere, as the conflict in the Middle East threatens to spiral further. Poor countries are labouring under a mountain of debt, and the continuing cost of living crisis in many countries is fuelling populism and a backlash against green policy. Toni, a respected Brazilian economist, told the Guardian: 'There's no doubt that the wars that we've seen – military wars and trade wars … are very damaging – physically, economically, socially – and they divert the direction and the attention from climate.' Vulnerable countries fear their concerns will be lost amid the push for militarisation. 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Anna Rasmussen, the chief negotiator for Aosis, said: 'Around the world, the 'unprecedented' has become our new norm. The economics of small island states are stymied by disasters we did not cause. Not even a year ago, the Caribbean was ravaged by Hurricane Beryl, the earliest category 5 hurricane in the Atlantic ever recorded.' Since the Paris agreement was signed in 2015, global greenhouse gas emissions have continued to rise. Temperatures are affected by the cumulative quantity of carbon in the atmosphere, so every additional tonne counts: scientists have now calculated that we can only carry on producing current levels of carbon dioxide for two more years, ensuring the breach of the 1.5C limit becomes permanent. But while temperatures have soared, and weather records have tumbled, any sense of urgency inside the negotiating halls seems to have cooled. Two weeks of preliminary talks, intended to lay the groundwork for Cop30, have just finished in Bonn. 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Get all the week's environment news - the good, the bad and the essential after newsletter promotion Gao Yuhe, of Greenpeace East Asia, said China could cause its emissions to peak this year if renewable energy growth continues. 'The year 2025 marks a pivotal moment in the country's energy transition,' she said. 'There is already enough existing capacity to meet today's peak demand. Approving a new wave of large-scale coal projects risks creating overcapacity, stranded assets, and higher transition costs. That will ultimately undermine progress toward a cleaner, more flexible power system.' The EU is locked in tense negotiations over its carbon target for 2040, which will be thrashed out next week. That target, which is expected to involve a cut in carbon of at least 90% compared with 1990 levels, would be the steepest yet presented, but arguments are raging over whether, and how much of, this could be met by trading carbon credits with other countries. When the 2040 figure is agreed, it must then also be translated into a commensurate 2035 goal – the end date for the current commitment period under the Paris agreement – and published along with further policy details as a fully fledged NDC in September. Other countries, including major emerging economies such as India, are still to submit their plans. 'There is a lot of watching and waiting going on,' says Arunabha Ghosh, the chief executive of the Council on Energy, Environment and Water, a prominent thinktank in India and one of the Cop30 envoys chosen by Brazil to support the aims of the talks. 'We should be judging countries on implementation – climate leaders are those who get things done, rather than those who say things.' A few countries have already presented their NDCs. The UK's is judged to be fairly ambitious, with an 81% cut in emissions compared to 1990 levels by 2035. Canada's effort and Japan's have both been found 'insufficient', however, by the Climate Action Tracker, which monitors the levels of countries' emissions reduction. A further problem is that none of the NDCs so far, which are pegged to 2035 or 2040, have contained revisions of countries' existing near-term targets. Current NDCs, set at Cop26 in Glasgow in 2021, are inadequate to stay within 1.5C. At Glasgow, countries agreed that the 'ratchet' – the system for updating NDCs – should allow for the upward revision of targets more frequently than the five-yearly system laid out in the Paris agreement. Disappointingly, no countries have availed themselves of the opportunity, said Niklas Höhne, of the NewClimate Institute. '[To stay within the 1.5C limit] needs drastic reductions. None of the NDCs on the table have updated 2030 numbers. But if we do not do more by 2030, it will be very difficult to catch up later.' Last year's conference of the parties (Cop) focused on finance, and that will also play a major role this year. Developing countries need assistance from the rich world, to help them cut emissions and cope with the impacts of extreme weather. At Cop29, they were assured of $1.3tn a year by 2035, with $300bn of this coming in the form of public finance from developed countries. Those numbers will be harder to reach now that the US has pulled out of climate finance and other forms of overseas aid. Poor countries want to see concrete plans for how the financial flows will be reached, and Brazil is working with last year's host, Azerbaijan, on a 'Baku to Belém roadmap' due in October. Yalchin Rafiyev, the chief negotiator for Azerbaijan at Cop29 last year in Baku, warned that not enough was being done to meet the financial commitments made last year, particularly from the taxpayer-funded development banks. 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Brazil's agenda for Cop30 also gives little room for what many activists still see as the key question: fossil fuels. At Cop28, in Dubai, countries made a landmark commitment to 'transition away from fossil fuels'. At Cop29, attempts to flesh that out with a timeframe and details of what it would mean were stymied by opposition from petrostates, including Saudi Arabia. Activists had hoped to bring the commitment back to Cop30, to be elaborated and formalised into a coherent plan that countries would sign up to. But Brazil appears wary of reopening the debate, and would prefer to regard such past resolutions as settled. The presidency has been resistant even to the idea of a 'cover text', the catch-all outcome document that in most Cops captures the key resolutions. At Bonn, it was not clear where in the Cop30 agenda it would be possible to discuss the transition away from fossil fuels. 'We tried to get to discuss it [in various forums] but we keep getting it moved away,' said Stela Herschmann, of the Observatório do Clima network of civil society groups in Brazil. 'It's like nobody wants us.' Despite the frustrations of the last two weeks of pre-talks in Bonn, the goodwill that Brazil enjoys as host nation was much in evidence. The presidency has drawn on expertise from around the world, creating a 'circle' of the former Cop presidents since the Paris agreement was forged in 2015, a 'circle' of finance ministers from around the world, and a group of economists. Indigenous people will play a key role, with a 'global ethical stocktake' intended to reflect their concerns, involving Brazil's environment minister, Marina Silva, and well-known climate activists including Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland. Brazil has also set out an 'action agenda' to track progress on initiatives from previous Cops and to foreground key issues related to the climate crisis, such as food and agriculture, forestry and nature, water, oceans, social justice and equity. The irony is that the most substantive issue of Cop30 – the NDCs – will be out of Brazil's hands, decided in national capitals long before any leaders hop on planes for Belém. 'We don't negotiate NDCs at Cops – this is nationally determined, so what we will have at Cop30 is the report of those nationally determined decisions that have been taken,' said Toni. 'And yes, that can be frustrating. There can be a good picture or very bad picture, we will see, but it will be a reflection of national politics more than anything. We are obviously the designated president of Cop30, but it is a collective responsibility.'
The Independent
an hour ago
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