This week, local democracy reporter Simon Finlay looks at how Reform has positioned itself in the county and further afield to cannibalise votes from the big two parties - and suggests a general election win could be a very real possibility...

The latest polling from Electoral Calculus at the beginning of the month will have made sobering reading for the Labour Party and the Conservatives.

Reform UK is on course, according to the pollsters, to take 362 seats at Westminster, Labour reduced to 136 and, more tellingly, the Tories to just 22.

Even with the usual caveat of it being a long way out from an election in 2029 (although many are starting to believe that rattled Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer may go to the country early), there appears to be a momentum developing which may be quite difficult to counter.

The Conservatives are in a mess. The party is short of MPs, funds and, crucially, short of ideas. They are speaking and no one is listening.

Linden Kemkaran, the new leader of Kent County Council, has already created a name for herself without trying too hard. She is now widely known by her first name (partly because people find it hard to pronounce her surname correctly) and because of the things she has said and how she has said them.

Many Tories in Kent actually quite admire her.

There are those in political commentariat who see Cllr Kemkaran, with an enhanced profile in her current role, as a possible parliamentary candidate next time round and probably in Kent.

There will be Tory MPs in the county, with wafer-thin majorities, sweating about their futures.

One senior Kent Conservative confided the other day: “One of our many big mistakes was housing. We believed that everybody wants houses, and we were wrong.

“In government, we forced the councils to carpet the county with houses local people can’t afford. Labour got in thinking there is a huge desire for housing and now want to make it even easier to build houses.

“If Reform says it won’t build houses, except affordable ones, they’ll probably win every seat in the county.”

Over in Northern Ireland, the Belfast Newsletter reported this week that Reform, with 1,000 members in the province, is now thinking of planting its flag there too.

This should worry the three unionist parties which have right-leaning, Eurosceptic supporters, who have seen their communities alter because of immigration. The recent riots were evidence of growing tensions.

This is at a time when unionism is said to be looking for some “big ideas” about how to work together and appeal to the Protestants who do not vote.

If they don’t act fast, they might find Reform will beat them to it.

This is precisely what Reform did in Kent in 2025 and have been doing since the Brexit referendum in 2016.

Leader Nigel Farage has a unique ability to gauge the public mood and express those sentiments with clarity.

No one saw the scale of Reform’s victory at KCC in May coming, least of all the main parties who thought survival lay in getting the core vote out.

Mr Farage’s critics say it is all “dog whistle” politics, that Reform UK is baseless and devoid of detail, racist and appealing to people’s prejudices with subtle, targeted messaging.

Maybe so. But the polls are a warning.

One of Mr Farage’s favourite gags in his speeches these days is a steal from the late comedian, Bob Monkhouse.

He tells his audiences: “You know, people used to laugh at me. Well, they’re not laughing now.”

There are plenty of ways to stay in the know when it comes to politics in Kent and Medway.

For more from Simon Finlay and the local democracy team, you can sign up to the Kent Politics Briefing newsletter, which arrives in inboxes every Friday.

You can also listen to our Kent Politics Podcast. This week’s episode welcomes Cllr Maxwell Harrison, who says people are “going to be blown away” by what Reform’s Doge unit has uncovered at KCC.

You can listen to the podcast at IM Listening, or download it from Apple Podcasts, Spotify and TuneIn – just search for Kent Politics Podcast. New episodes are available every Friday.

And you can watch the KMTV Kent Politics Show every Friday at 5pm on Freeview channel 7 and Virgin Media channel 159.