Kent County Council was one of Reform’s biggest wins of the 2025 local elections – it picked up no fewer than 56 of the council’s 81 seats overnight, taking control with a landslide.
And already, as the Guardian has reported, Kent’s new council leader Linden Kemkaran is writing to the Labour government asking them to change their immigration policy. But perhaps contrary to the expectations of the people who elected her, and the leadership of Reform, she’s asking Labour to go easier on migrant visas.
Kemkaran has written to home secretary Yvette Cooper expressing concern about the government’s crackdown on visas for care workers. At present, around a quarter of the UK’s care workers – of whom the country has an acute shortage – arrive on visas sponsored by the care home they would work in.
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From next week, Labour plans to close off that route entirely, which even Reform’s new council leader has spotted will spell a disaster for local authorities like hers across the country.
The intervention marks the first occasion in which an elected Reform politician has compromised with reality to do their job, but it does pit Kemkaran against her party’s own leadership, almost all of whom have spoken out against overseas care workers.
It might also raise some questions for Yvette Cooper and Labour, though: if even Reform’s elected politicians can see the problems with making it harder for care workers to move to the UK, why can’t they?
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