Kent Council leader's glittering writing career

If Reform leader of Kent Council Linden Kemkaran – currently at the centre of an imbroglio over a leaked video – is forced to step down, she can always return to her career as a writer at the Spectator.

Kemkaran is facing calls to step down after a video was leaked of a heated virtual council meeting in which she swore and told party members to “suck it up” regarding her decisions. Four Reform UK councillors have been suspended in the wake of the leak, which followed disquiet over Kemkaran’s plans to hike council tax to the maximum permitted five percent having been elected promising swingeing spending cuts would be easy and that Kent would be a “shop window” into how the party would govern well.

Kemkaran is currently hanging on, saying it is “business as usual” – which, for Reform, is technically true – but were she to be forced out or fall on her sword, there’s always her pre-political career of knocking out sub-Mail dross for the Spectator to fall back on.

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Her articles for the right wing magazine from 2017 to 2024 include such gems as ‘I’m an Aga convert’ (“I never thought I could love a lump of hot metal so much”) and the eternal question for Kent taxpayers ‘Should you buy a vineyard? (“Last summer we moved house within the southeast from town to country, having deliberately sought out a property with land that would be suitable for planting a small vineyard”).

Plus there’s ‘One shark attack shouldn’t put you off Tobago’ (“Our main concern has always been to avoid stepping on a sea urchin or a stonefish”).

And there’s a little bit of politics, as Ben Elton would say, which has dated like old milk. ‘What is it about Boris Johnson that makes his critics so angry?,’ ran one headline in 2019, in which she questioned what it was that people disliked about her hero. “Is it because Boris has, on occasion, bent the truth?,” she wrote. “Show me a politician who hasn’t. Does his charisma and ability to get people onside wind people up? In my opinion, this is exactly what the UK needs right now to lead us out of the doldrums.” It’s that political acumen that’s taken Kemkaran to the top!