When Linden Kemkaran (formerly of The Spectator ) was elected leader of Kent County Council, she presented herself as the poster-child for Reform in power. ‘The electorate,’ she said in June, ‘are looking to judge whether they can put their trust in a Reform government at the next election.’ Her administration set up ‘Dolge’, a ‘department of local government efficiency’, modelled on Elon Musk’s original, and instructed it to cut wasteful spending and find cash-saving efficiencies. After just five months, however, its efforts appear to have faltered.

The council is already ‘down to the bare bones’, Diane Morton, Reform’s cabinet member for adult social care in Kent, told the Financial Times yesterday. Reform has belatedly discovered that Kent, like many councils, has effectively

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