Reform UK leader Nigel Farage swept into Kent today to launch his campaign for the county council elections with the prediction: “We’re going to do very well.”

Mr Farage refused to say how many of his candidates might be elected but said there would be a concentrated effort on the coastal divisions.

The Kent County Council (KCC) polls on May 1 will see 81 seats up for grabs.

The Conservatives currently have 57 members at County Hall and many observers believe Reform UK will pose a serious threat not only to the Tories but also to Labour.

The Reform UK leader started his day with a walkabout in Hythe where he met supporters and locals before pausing for a cup of coffee at a local tea rooms.

Wearing a green tweed jacket, Mr Farage said: “I’m feeling very optimistic. If you look at some of the general election scores we got around the county and bear in mind it was a very short campaign from a standing start.

“We’ve been building branches around the county and we won a KCC by election at Greenhithe. I look at areas like this (Hythe), where they’re well organised, they’ve got proper local candidates with real experience and quite a lot of business-type people as well.

“We’re going to very well but how many seats we’re going to win it’s so tough to call because it is such a split race.”

Asked where he is targeting. he said: “I had a chat with the MP for Tunbridge Wells (Lib Dem Mike Martin) the other day - nice bloke, we get on ever so well - and even he said ‘I think you’re going to pretty well in some parts of Tunbridge Wells’.

“I think the absolute best areas will be, frankly, all round the coast and ten to 15 miles inland will be our number one target areas but it’s not to say that other places aren’t as well.”

Mr Martin has a different recollection.

He said: “Good of Nigel to compliment me, but I didn’t say that. I said the Lib Dems are going to do well in Tunbridge Wells.”

Mr Farage said that in Kent where there was once two party politics there “is now four or five party politics”, particularly in areas like Hythe which is runs by the Greens.

He added: “I think that gives us an advantage. Reform voters are very committed, I think they believe in what we are trying to do and I think they will turn out on May 1.

“You can never, ever with a set of elections like these get away from national over-lay - it’s always there.”

Mr Farage mentioned the issue of small boats carrying asylum seekers across the Channel and acknowledged KCC’s issues in having to initially take in lone youngsters arriving in to the UK that way.

“This is a front line county,” he said. “Even though there are fewer asylum seekers spread around Kent, although for child services it is particularly taxing, this issue and the fact it is happening on the doorstep…that isn’t going away.”

Mr Farage visited several businesses in the town’s High Street including a card shop and a café whose owners sad they are going to be hit hard when the hikes in national insurance contributions come into force tomorrow (April 1).

Mr Farage said it would be a “really bad day” for businesses.

He accepts that KCC has been underfunded and the cost of social care has ballooned in recent years as the population has got older.

But Mr Farage claimed KCC has been “horrendously financially mismanaged” and carries a huge amount of debt.

The Reform leader added: “Our argument is that the Conservatives have run Kent for too long, they have become complacent…we’re going to put some people in with business brains to fix it.

“I can’t fix Kent County Council or Shropshire County Council - and I don’t know what’s going to happen on May 1 - but the whole point of what we are doing is broaden and deepen, broaden and deepen.

“This time last wear there were 25,000 members of Reform - we’re now north of 220,000. There’s a lot of talent within that pool.

“We’ve got a lot of men and women who have got serious business experience and, frankly, we need to get hold of county council budgets. That is the big pitch to voters in Kent.”

Conservative Cllr Harry Rayner, deputy cabinet member for finance at KCC, said: “KCC is as financially well-managed as it could be given the high inflation suffered over recent years and the constraints put on council tax by central government and particularly the expenditure on things like highways and associated works.”

He said that Kent’s debts, thought to be in excess of £800m are partly due to “aged” loans taken out 20 years or more ago when central government was encouraging county councils to do so.

But Cllr Rayner said his authority has “retained assets” of more than £450m.

The influential Local Government Information Unit recently said that KCC is a “perfectly well-run” council.

Hythe resident Joy O’Gorman, whose father Thomas moved from County Cork as a young man and died in Burma serving in the British Army, said: “I am 100% Reform UK because I think we need reform, the county needs reform.

“Labour and the Conservatives have done absolutely nothing for this country.”

A local man, who declined to be named, bellowed “t***” at Mr Farage and tried unsuccessfully to confront the Reform leader. He was led away by security.

Diane Tanner moved to Hythe from the former mining town of Aylesham, near Dover, 15 years ago.

She said that she was now “ashamed” to say that she voted for the Labour Party in 2024.

Ms Tanner added: “I only voted for Labour to get the Tories out but that was a mistake.

“But I have now gone across to Reform because they speak common sense.

“Sir Keir Starmer is the only left-winger in the Conservative Party.”

The Reform UK leader addressed a rally of members and supporters this evening at the Kent Showgrounds at Detling, near Maidstone.

Around 900 people turned out to see Mr Farage, who received a standing ovation when he took to the stage and when he left.

He was applauded when he spoke about Labour’s record in smashing the people smuggling gangs who send small boats to Kent’s shores.

Mr Farage said Britain must take “take control of our borders”.

He said the UK is “going down the drain” and has ten years before it becomes “completely unrecognisable”.

Winning at KCC would be the building blocks of securing parliamentary seats at the next general election, said Mr Farage.

He told the crowd: “We could be seeing something here that is a political earthquake here in Kent.”

Earlier, former BBC radio DJ and now GB News presenter Liz Kershaw addressed the audience as did three Kent county councillors, including the recently elected Greenhithe member Cllr Thomas Mallon and Dirk Ross.