Will Farage's 'Doge' project really blitz council waste?

Having impressively seized control of 10 county councils in the recent elections, Reform UK are delivering on their promise to undertake Elon Musk/Doge-style reviews of the operations of the various local authorities under their command.

- SEAN O'GRADY

The first to get the treatment is Kent County Council. Some doubt whether such a comic-opera version of the American exercise is really serious, or if it’s just a stunt...

Why are they doing this?

Well, it was an election pledge, and ostensibly it could save some money that would otherwise be wasted, and make some services more efficient. Nothing wrong with that.

Who is on the crack team?

It’s fair to say that some are quite successful businesspeople, and some, apparently, are IT experts; but, unlike the US Doge (Department of Government Efficiency) brigade, the British team actually includes the new leader and deputy leader of the council, Linden Kemkaran and Brian Collins.

It is also fair to say that none of the Reform UK Doge team are able to rival the expertise, let alone vast wealth, of Elon Musk (or, perhaps, the skills of the small group that the world’s richest man brought to DC).

Nor does the slightly pretentious letter signed by Kemkaran, Nigel Farage and Reform chair Zia Yusuf possess the gravitas of an executive order signed by the president of the United States of America. It contains a good deal of Trumpian menace, but the fact is that Kemkaran is in no stronger a position than anyone would be in a comparable role in local government.

So a lot of the Reform/Doge activity, including the “We mean business” pics, is “performative”, as they say.

The full list is:

• Nathaniel Fried, “open-source intelligence” guru (head of Doge)

• Arron Banks, businessman and Reform politician (adviser to Doge)

• Zia Yusuf, chair of Reform UK

• Linden Kemkaran, leader of Kent County Council

• Brian Collins, deputy leader of Kent County Council