Linden Kemkaran has been named as the new Reform UK leader of Kent County Council (KCC) – elected one week after the party swept all aside to win an emphatic victory.
Straight-talking Mrs Kemkaran, who lives in Headcorn and is the newly-elected member for the Maidstone South East division, was voted at a special meeting at County Hall Maidstone this evening.
She said: “You have to understand that we won a massive majority and we have absolute, ultimate control.”
Mrs Kemkaran vowed to remove the Ukraine flag from the chamber, open the council’s books to auditors and review working practices across the authority.
She beat a field of six candidates who included Maxine Fothergill, Paul Thomas and Brian Collins.
After the result, the new leader was whisked away to meet the KCC chief executive Amanda Beer and general counsel Ben Watts.
Later she emerged and said: “This is my first day in a brand new job and you wouldn’t expect me to have all the answers.
“We are going to get the auditors to come in and take a leaf out of Elon Musk’s book and appoint some sort of DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) to go through everything in detail and find out where the money is being spent and whether we can make any changes and make life better for the residents.”
On Reform UK’s proposed end to working from home, she said: “We are going to look at every aspect of how every person works inside this building but I am not ruling anything in or out at this moment.”
On the removal of a Ukrainian flag in the chamber, she said: “We are here to represent the people of Kent. This is Kent County Council…a foreign war being fought thousands of miles away is simply a distraction.”
She said Ukrainian people are “amazing people” who have made a contribution to British society “but a flag doesn’t change any of that”.
The new leader said that she would spend the weekend considering who will make up her cabinet.
Although members were forbidden from speaking to the Press, one councillor said: “She’s definitely the best person for the job and she was the best of a pretty strong field of candidates. She was the best choice.”
On May 1, Reform UK captured 57 of the 81 seats at County Hall, reducing the Conservatives from the party of office to just five members in the chamber and joint third overall with the Green Party.
It ended an uninterrupted 28 years in power but the result was broadly similar to other parts of the country where the Tories also suffered huge losses.
The Liberal Democrats, with 12 councillors and led by Cllr Antony Hook, are now the official opposition at County Hall.
The front runner to become the group leader of the Conservatives at KCC, Cllr Harry Rayner, said earlier today: “I do genuinely wish Reform all the best in the new administration.
“But the reality is that running a council with a turnover of £2bn has to be faced by newly-elected people with little experience of running an authority of this size.”
On May 2, as the size of Reform UK’s victory became clear, one newly elected councillor said the new administration was keen to “open the books” at KCC to identify where there may be waste.
The new council will have to deal with the immediate task of replacing chief executive Amanda Beer who retires in November.
The new leader will also have to navigate the council’s passage through the government’s local government reforms.
This will entail scrapping all 14 councils in Kent – including KCC itself – before re-emerging as three, possibly four, much larger unitary authorities.
The government claims this will make local government more efficient, streamline services and drive down costs. As yet, there is no sign of when that is likely to take place or if Kent will get an elected mayor.
Council leaders are awaiting further details from the local government minister Jim McMahon as to how the new look Kent councils might look.
Some council insiders believe the government’s direction of travel is to have a smaller number of new unitaries.
