What next for Kent after Reform storm?

TORY WIPEOUT LEAVES UP-AND-COMING PARTY FACING THE CHALLENGES OF POWER

- By DANIEL ESSON

WHETHER local politicians like it or not, people tend to vote on national issues in local elections.

The Kent County Council election results have confirmed what the polls have been saying for some time - Reform UK are the big name on the block, and are sticking it to both Labour and the Tories.

Kent has been a Conservative stronghold almost continuously since the council's creation in 1974, with only a brief gap of no overall control in the 1990s. Decades of near-unbroken Tory hegemony have been shattered by Reform UK.

Reform UK, like each of Nigel Farage's outfits before it, depends on capturing an anti-system energy: being seen to be the party against all the established ones. This is a viable strategy for an insurgent opposition - but is it one for governing?

On April 25, Mr Farage told a press conference in Dover that the first thing his party would do in control of Kent County Council is “bring the auditors in” to investigate “gross financial mismanagement” by the Tories in recent years.

The authority had to cut more than £70 million over the last financial year to balance its budget in April. Will Reform UK be able to counteract the ever-expanding costs of the council's legal responsibilities?