The dust has settled at Kent County Council (KCC), the cabinet is appointed, and the first meeting has been held at the Sessions House Maidstone, home of KCC. The election saw the old order swept away, and a new order put in its place, in the form of the Reform UK Party. But just how new are they, and what new policies do they have to turn round a failing council?
Many of the ‘new’ councillors are not new but rather defectors – some from the Tories and a few from Labour – and indeed serial defectors: one councillor has been elected under at least four different party rosettes. That might be a good thing, as experience of local government administration will be needed if they are to manage a large and complex county like Kent. That said, it does not appear as if many of them have ever been cabinet members before, and experience at that level, bearing in mind the difficulties that KCC faces, will be at a premium.
It’s not just a lack of administrative experience that is of concern but also a lack of political sensitivity. The fact that Reform were very vocal, prior to taking up office, about highway maintenance contracts they alleged were of poor value, and adverse comments about staff working from home, was not helpful. The help and advice from the officers will be crucial in these early months of the administration.
DO(L)GE comes to Kent
Prominent amongst Reform’s plans is the formation of a homegrown version of Elon Musk’s DOGE, called the Department of Local Government Efficiency or DOLGE, which they say will root out waste. There have been many keyboard warriors out there, convinced that local government is corrupt, wasteful, or inefficient, and that they have a simple solution to sort it all out. Now some of them have been elected to KCC, hence project DOGE.
The original US DOGE has crashed and burned, leaving Elon Musk broken, bloodied and bowed, as he retires from the field with his reputation in tatters and his financial status severely dented – which might have led Reform to consider their options before charging headlong into becoming a hostage to fortune. But no, there they go, full of vituperation, threats, and poor management skills, into shouting about gold plated pensions, and rubbishing the business relationships between KCC and its suppliers. This is not a good start.
Reform’s blunt-edged approach may have severe repercussions
KCC is in a very difficult situation. Since 2010, it has suffered constant cuts in funding under the last government’s austerity measures. Demand for its services in adult social care and special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) is constantly rising, and inflationary pressures are making budgets tighter and tighter.
If budget making is thrown into chaos by a bunch of ill-informed tech vigilantes, there will be severe repercussions for the council, which could cost us all dearly. If contract terms for staff and suppliers are upended, the machine will seize up. We can look forward to more ‘bed blocking’, as elderly patients are kept longer in hospital, while a care plan is sought for them, and to suppliers involving the council in a series of court cases if new terms are retrospectively applied by the council in order to save money. We might compare it to a bunch of amateur electricians finding fault with a very complex machine, armed with nothing more than their own prejudices and a set of uninsulated wire cutters.
If Nigel Farage and his posse try to treat the staff like Musk did in the US with his DOGE, they may well find that even the minimal employment rights operating in this country might pull them up short. The courts in the UK are not appointees of any politician, as they are in the US. Then, if staff, many of them specialists, start to leave, who will replace them? As in any other field, low pay and inferior employment terms will discourage the best from applying. In which case, good luck ChatGPT – you’re on your own.
Waste? What waste?
It is possible that in an outfit as big as KCC, there will be something for this mini-me DOGE to expose in an example of waste to validate their activities. KCC’s project management and public transport administration have, for instance, been lamentable, and adult social care continues to be a burning problem still in search of a solution.
But in reality, when DOLGE applies its magnifying glass to the finances of KCC, there is likely to be nothing to see. It would be nice to think that the Tories were holding out on us all these years, but experience suggests that is unlikely, and indeed that there is a greater likelihood of finding fairies at the bottom of the garden.
Kent needs devolution not central control
Even more concerning is this control by wire from Reform HQ. Centralism, especially political centralism, has a poor record on delivery, as it causes friction, when local sensibilities are overreached by national egos. Farage has a lot of plates spinning, and he likes his holidays, so he is he hardly going to be too bothered with Kent. The national party’s combative attitudes and pointless rows about flags, diversity and climate change diverts Reform at a crucial time from the more important local task of keeping KCC away from being declared insolvent.
Central control has been in issue within Kent itself. In 1968, in an acknowledgement of the fact that the public have a greater affinity to their local communities, the Redcliffe-Maud Commission recommended that Kent be divided into two: West Kent and East Kent. But the new council leader, Linden Kemkaran, has made her feelings clear. She has set her face against reorganisation and devolution by arguing that Kent is “one county and one people”, as if it were some kind of ethnic nation state. Bearing in mind county flags were going to be banned originally, along with Ukrainian and gay pride emblems, it is strange that all of a sudden we are hearing her argue for Kentish exceptionalism. A county like Kent, which is more emblem than reality, has no chance of emulating the sense of shared identity in the likes of Yorkshire or Cornwall.
Really all that has to be decided upon is whether there should be three or four unitaries. We have been hurtling, if anything in local government hurtles, in the wrong direction, for decades, and it has cost us dearly. Kemkaran would be better off in trying to hold KCC together over the next four years, so that an orderly transition can be made to unitary status and greater devolution. If she fails in this endeavour, the government will send in the commissioners, who will act as all technocrats do, with utility rather than kindness. I suspect that Roger Gough, the former leader, may now be rather relieved, once over the shock of being defenestrated.
The right stuff or simply flavour of the month?
Reform will have to show resolution, a deftness of touch, and a sense of unity over the next four years, if it is to show that it is indeed made of the right stuff. It’s debatable whether they can make it through once they find that things are not quite as they thought, that glib and easy solutions won’t work, and may even be deleterious to their standing with the public. Farage will drop them like a stone once he loses interest or finds things to be more difficult than he thought.
G K Chesterton once said, “When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing, but will instead believe in anything”, and so it is in Kent.
Reform is flavour of the month – but only until the next fad or trend offers something more attractive.
