Nigel Farage has really gone and done it now. Gone and made Reform run something. In fact, several somethings - and not just a couple of mayoralties in Lincolnshire and Hull. He’s also in charge of 10 councils, including Kent county, where both us Nigels live, having wrestled it from nearly 30 years of Conservative control by taking 57 of the authority’s 81 seats.
Had this been a General Election, Mr Farage would now be sitting in No10 as PM, scratching his head over what to do next. But it wasn’t. And the Reform leader should be mindful of what happened to the SDP in the 1980s. At this point in the electoral cycle, it was also on a roll.
The Gang of Four’s Shirley Williams won a stunning victory in the Crosby by-election in 1981 with a 5,000 majority as the Labour vote collapsed from 40 per cent to less than 10 per cent. And the following year, the SDP Liberal Alliance picked up 1,850 council seats.
Six years later, the party which promised to break the mould of British politics was swallowed up by the Liberals and ceased to exist as a political force. That could happen to Reform if any deal with the Tories ends up in a Conservative takeover.
On the national scene, it is unlikely that Reform will prompt substantial change from the Government other than nudging it to move faster. Keir Starmer is bound by Labour’s election manifesto, and his Plan for Change does not include a change of plan.
What it might do is make unpopular and expensive net zero targets tougher to achieve, which has already got climate change campaigners in a tizzy.
Flossie Boyd of Global Witness said: “Every year people are experiencing the very real effects of the climate crisis with wetter winters, extreme heat waves and devastating storms.”
And Sofie Jenkinson from the not-for-profit Round Our Way added: “It’s odd to see Reform on TV questioning the basic science, which helps no one.”
Now comes the difficult bit for Mr Farage. He has his hands on some levers of power at last, and Reform’s future depends on how he pulls them. More than three million people now depend on him for their local services.
There can be no doubt that concerns about immigration in general, and cross-Channel boat crossings in particular, were major drivers of Reform’s electoral success.
Kent is in the front line of the boat people invasion because that is where they step ashore to claim asylum, and the new look Kent County Council will be expected to do something about that.
Farage has gone and done it. Next up is the 800-pound gorilla that defeated every other leader - Nigel Nelson
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Which will be tricky. KCC has a statutory duty to provide housing, hotels and social services for refugees and places for unaccompanied children, but with little say in allocation.
Reform chairman Zia Yusuf promises judicial reviews to deal with this. Good luck with that.
The Tories tried it when they were in charge without success. And the number of unaccompanied migrant minors they had to look after in the county rose 59 per cent last year to nearly 1,200.
There is a National Transfer Scheme to share the burden with other local authorities, but the number arriving continues to exceed the number moved.
Immigration is a reserved power of the central government, like defence and foreign policy. KCC could no more change that than form its own army or scupper closer UK ties with the EU.
Yet if the council can do nothing about immigration, it calls into question why voters put their trust in a bunch of people to empty their bins, fill their potholes and keep council taxes down when they have no experience doing it.
The KCC logo is the Invicta white horse, which stands for “undefeated” and symbolises Kent’s refusal to be subdued during Norman times.
Farage will now need to prove that dealing with immigration does not defeat him, as it has every other political party.
