Is it possible to character assassinate a city?
As the Spectator presents Canterbury as a lawless no-go zone, we look at the truth beyond the sensationalisation. Plus the serious work begins for Reform at KCC, news in brief, and more
A recent profile of Canterbury in the Spectator characterises the city as a lawless dystopia in decline, but just how true are the claims put forward in the piece? Further down, as Reform selects their leader to run KCC, the hard work for the party is about to begin, plus news in brief, and more.
Is it possible to character assassinate a city?
That’s a question the Spectator set out to answer last week with a scathing assessment of the state of Canterbury, but just how true are the assertations within?
Reading the article, it’s easy to wonder if writer Lloyd Evans even had the right place. The image he paints is of a lawless no-go zone where police daren’t enter, decaying buildings, and a town centre overrun by low quality shops and vagrants. There are many places in Kent with problems, but it’s hard to imagine a world where Canterbury would be identified from his list of gripes. Indeed, it’s only really clear that he does indeed mean the city when he identifies the look of Canterbury Cathedral as being part of the problem.
The piece suggests that footfall to the city centre is down because daytrippers and ‘lucrative French students’ no longer visit since Eurostar stopped serving Kent. Now, we’re very much on board with returning international rail to Kent, but there’s little evidence that this is true.
Footfall to Canterbury returned to pre-pandemic levels in 2024 of around 8 million annual visitors, so even if the French students have stopped coming, plenty of others are in their place. That isn’t to say there are no warning signs for the city though. Footfall in the first three months of 2025 was down 15.1% on last year, even as the UK average saw modest increases.
One place it might be worth looking for that missing footfall is from the area’s largest educational establishment, the University of Kent. Student numbers at the institution have fallen from around 14,300 in 2019/20 to 11,200 by 2022/23. This comes as the university significantly restructures its course offer as it makes significant layoffs in an effort to get its finances under control.
Perhaps the strangest claim in the piece is that Canterbury supposedly has a crime rate 50% higher than the national average. We’ve spent some time scouring data and can’t find anything that backs this claim up. Even within Kent, crime rates in Canterbury are lower than the average, with Maidstone, Swale, Medway, Dartford, Gravesham, and Thanet all having notably higher figures. Kent Police records roughly 86 crimes for every 1,000 city residents, which is in line with the figure for England and only marginally above the UK number of 84.
The feature goes on like this, with one spurious claim or half-truth after another. Yes, the city centre has a few shops selling tat, but what town centre doesn’t at this point? There are obviously run-down and abandoned shopfronts, but only 8% of units in Canterbury are vacant, well below the national average. Perhaps the strangest claim put forward is that some of the stonework of Canterbury Cathedral looks ‘sad and haggard.’ Most of us would aspire to only look sad and haggard after nearly 1,000 years.
There’s a loose effort to tie the writer’s perception of Canterbury into the recent local elections, where Reform swept through areas that might often be considered ‘left behind’ places. However, this is not always universally true. It’s even less relevant here though, with Canterbury being the only place in the county that continued to return Labour councillors.
Canterbury is one of the places holding up strongest against the Reform insurgency. The city council is controlled by a Labour-Lib Dem coalition, with a small number of Conservatives and Greens in opposition. The city even had three by-elections just two months ago, where there was little sign of any Reform breakthrough. Instead, the voters decide to elect Labour, Conservative, and Green councillors while overlooking the new old kids on the block.
The writer’s grand finale is a conversation with a homeless man named Ginger. Rather than ponder the issues that resulted in the man being homeless or what should be done about people struggling without accommodation, the encounter is used as a cheap gag that ends with Evans giving the man enough money to buy a litre of alcohol because ‘it will do him good.’ It’s a cheap, smug way to conclude a piece that could easily be characterised using the same terms.
Canterbury isn’t without faults, but it deserves better than being cast as a backdrop for a tired narrative of national decline. The version of the city being put forward in the Spectator says more about that publication and its author than anything in the piece itself.
Have a Kent story you think we might be interested in? Get in touch via hello AT kentcurrent DOT news - We’re always happy to talk off the record in the first instance.
The serious work now begins for Reform
Last week, we reported that Reform had chosen Linden Kemkaran as their leader following their victory in 57 of the county’s 81 council seats. In turn, Kemkaran is set to become the council's leader next Thursday at the first full council meeting since the election.
Kemkaran has been enthusiastically talking to the media since she was chosen for the role, giving hints about exactly what might be coming as a new party takes control of Kent for the first time in decades.
She has pledged to stop flying the Ukrainian flag at County Hall. She wants to find ways to cut costs for the council, telling reporters that she “loved” the idea of an Elon Musk-style Department of Government Efficiency, despite the fact those efforts only resulted in additional costs in the US. Likely, Kemkaran and Reform will very quickly butt up against some of the inevitable realities of local government, particularly the lack of financial wiggle room given the vast majority of council budgets are spent on statutory services like adult social care and children’s services.
Given her party’s national rhetoric, Kemkaran told BBC South East Today that she would try to ‘lessen the impact of illegal immigration on the residents of Kent.’ When challenged, she could offer no clarity on what that might look like beyond vague suggestions of trying to push back against migrants being housed in hotels in the county, which is not seemingly in the gift of the council to control.
All of which speaks to the constraints that Reform will now find themselves operating in as council leaders. It’s one thing to shout about issues when you aren’t tasked with any meaningful power to fix them. Still, when you’re suddenly in control of vast budgets to fill in potholes, subsidise buses, and look after children in care, it’s very different from campaign pledges to stop migrant boats.
The Times found early signs of this conflict when visiting Kent last week and speaking to residents who voted for Reform almost entirely based on immigration. This is leading to some rather rapid about turns, with new Romney Marsh Reform councillor David Wimble having to point out that he and his council can do nothing to stop the boats, despite fellow Reform candidates in his district standing on a pledge of, er, stopping the boats.
Former Swale Independents county councillor Mike Baldock summed it up on the recent Kent Politics Podcast, where he suggested that winning such a commanding majority on the county council could end up being the worst thing for their popularity in the long term.
Time will tell, but by next week, we should have a clearer idea of exactly what the new Reform administration in Kent will look like. It’s going to be an interesting few years.
In brief
🔵 Following their drop from 62 seats to five in the recent county election, the Kent Conservative Group has named Malling West councillor Harry Rayner their new leader. Elsewhere, the Conservative Group at Thanet District Council has chosen to replace their leader and deputy for the coming year.
🏗️ PMG Regeneration has submitted a planning application to Dartford Borough Council to build up to 400 homes on a former landfill in Greenhithe.
🏨 Former offices above Mallus Indian restaurant on Maidstone High Street could be converted into a 36-room hotel.
🚧 Junction improvements on the A249 between Kemsley and Iwade will now extend until September this year. The works were initially supposed to conclude at the end of 2024.
🚗 Kent County Council is proposing to take over the enforcement of moving traffic offences in Tunbridge Wells, which would see the authority add further cameras and signage to a restricted area in the town centre.
🪳 Hygiene inspectors found cockroaches at the fancy Abode hotel in Canterbury, establishing that they had been active on the premises for at least a year.
🥚 Headcorn company Barradale Eggs has been found guilty of re-packing a batch of eggs to extend the best before date and was fined a whopping £466 as a result.
🎤 Convicted domestic abuser and rapper Dizzee Rascal advertised a free gig on the Margate Steps last week, which went about as well as you’d expect.
🎸 LA rock band Haim have been added to the Summer Series of music events at Dreamland in Margate, playing a one-off UK show at the amusement park.
⚽ Whitstable Town have won the FA Vase, defeating AFC Whyteleafe 2-1 in a Wembley final.
🛟 The Folkestone Dispatch has been meeting the volunteers of the Folkestone Rescue charity.
🏛️ Dover’s town hall has opened to the public for the first time in 800 years following a £10.5m refurbishment.
🐦⬛ Red-billed choughs, a type of crow extinct in Kent for two centuries, have been spotted in the wild around Thanet following a successful reintroduction project.
🦫 Beavers could be introduced to the River Stour near Canterbury.
More Currents
In our Monday edition for paid supporters, our columnist Zahra Barri volunteered at a farm animal rescue charity on the Kent/London border. It’s easy to become overwhelmed by the state of everything happening in the world, so Zahra is trying to see what differences we can make on a smaller, local level. Just beware of the goats.
On Saturday, our next big interview is with Tristan Osborne, one of several Kent Labour MPs swept into power last year, perhaps somewhat unexpectedly. It’s a fascinating and wide-ranging discussion with a new MP getting used to the role. The whole conversation will be exclusive to our paid supporters, so please consider supporting our work to gain access to it and all of our journalism.
Footnotes
Follow us on social media! We’re on Facebook and BlueSky for now.
If you enjoy the Kent Current, please share it with your friends, family, associates, and even your enemies. We have no meaningful marketing budget, so we rely on word of mouth from our readers to find new readers.
Gift me a thousand years, I would be honoured to carry the moniker of sad and haggard with me :)
Actually, the cathedral looks lovely.