How goes it this week for Kent Council – Reform UK’s flagship authority and what the party has billed as its “shop window” for what the whole country would look like if Nigel Farage’s mob was in charge? Another councillor has been suspended in a row over a leaked video, another councillor says he was booted out for writing a mucky book… and both are planning on taking the party to court!
In another stellar week for Linden Kemkaran, the hapless Kent Council leader who Farage still backs “100%”, councillor Isabella Kemp has been suspended from the party over a leaked video in which Kemkaran swore and told party members to “suck it up” regarding her decisions. The row follows disquiet over Kemkaran’s plans to hike council tax to the maximum permitted five per cent, having been elected promising swingeing spending cuts would be easy.
Kemp has also been sacked from her job at Reform’s UK headquarters in London and has said she is exploring legal action against the party.
Five Reform councillors – including Bill Barrett, Paul Thomas, Brian Black and Oliver Bradshaw – have now been expelled by Kemkaran, while another, Maxine Fothergill, remains suspended by the party.
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Another expelled Reform Kent councillor, Robert Ford, has now created an Independent Reformers group on the council alongside Barrett after claiming he was booted out following disquiet over an “erotic novel” he penned.
Ford was kicked out of the party last month following unofficial and unspecified complaints from female members of staff. He now claims this was because of his raunchy scribblings and is also launching legal action against the party.
He said: “It’s astonishing that my name can be defamed in the media simply because I wrote an erotic novel and got it published by a major company, and I then mentioned it to a few people in the building behind me. It’s a shame that our great nation has come to this.”
Kemkaran is unperturbed by the soap opera, meanwhile, this week drawing parallels between her party and, er, her son’s army training.
“Some had quit because they couldn’t hack it, others have been thrown out for bad behaviour, because they weren’t good enough or they weren’t team players – not up to the challenge or were simply unable or unwilling to accept discipline,” she said. It’s all going very well, isn’t it?
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