{"id":27842,"date":"2025-10-21T15:24:03","date_gmt":"2025-10-21T14:24:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/?p=27842"},"modified":"2025-10-24T15:27:57","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T14:27:57","slug":"kent-county-council-is-reforms-shop-window-its-leaked-zoom-call-implies-chaos-and-poor-leadership","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/arts-social-sciences\/kent-county-council-is-reforms-shop-window-its-leaked-zoom-call-implies-chaos-and-poor-leadership\/","title":{"rendered":"Kent County Council is Reform\u2019s \u2018shop window\u2019 \u2013 its leaked Zoom call implies chaos and poor leadership"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A leaked video of an online meeting between members of the Reform-led Kent county council showed shocking exchanges <em>says Lisa Lazard, Professor in Psychology, The Open University<\/em>. There was shouting, swearing and repeated interruptions. At one point, council leader Linden Kemkaran mutes another member of the council.<\/p>\n<p>Councillors Paul Thomas, Oliver Bradshaw, Bill Barret and Maxine Fothergrill have been suspended pending an investigation over their conduct.\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/politics\/2025\/10\/19\/reforms-flagship-council-jackie-weaver-style-meltdown-kent\/\">Reform has<\/a>, at the same time, defended the aggressive exchanges on the call as evidence of robust argument and a sign that Kent councillors are taking their responsibilities seriously.<\/p>\n<p>Kent county council has 50 Reform members, giving it a huge majority. Kent has therefore been seen as a test case for whether\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/topics\/reform-uk-96168\">Reform<\/a>\u00a0can run administrations. Kemkaran makes this explicit during the leaked call, reminding fellow council members that party leader Nigel Farage sees their council as \u201cthe flagship council\u201d and a \u201cshop window\u201d for how Reform operates councils.<\/p>\n<p>But as a psychologist who studies power, interaction and online meeting dynamics, I see the Reform meeting as a case study in something else \u2013 poor\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/topics\/leadership-2333\">leadership<\/a>, a lack of team trust and collaboration. It suggests an absence of the psychological safety needed to effectively run a council or any other organisation.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/kent-county-council-is-reforms-shop-window-its-leaked-zoom-call-implies-chaos-and-poor-leadership-267900\">Read the full article on The Conversation<\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>Picture credit: Element5 Digital on Pexels<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A leaked video of an online meeting between members of the Reform-led Kent county council showed shocking exchanges says Lisa Lazard, Professor in Psychology, The Open University. There was shouting, swearing and repeated interruptions. At one point, council leader Linden Kemkaran mutes another member of the council. Councillors Paul Thomas, Oliver Bradshaw, Bill Barret and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":27843,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,13],"tags":[869],"class_list":["post-27842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-social-sciences","category-psychology","tag-fass"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27842"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27842\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27846,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27842\/revisions\/27846"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}