{"id":251171,"date":"2025-07-09T16:12:12","date_gmt":"2025-07-09T16:12:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/251171\/"},"modified":"2025-07-09T16:12:12","modified_gmt":"2025-07-09T16:12:12","slug":"reform-uk-cabinet-member-says-he-was-sacked-in-ambush-hours-after-meeting-farage-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/251171\/","title":{"rendered":"Reform UK cabinet member says he was sacked in \u2018ambush\u2019 \u2014 hours after meeting Farage \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Barrett also said that Kemkaran gave him one month to find cuts from a dossier on the highways department which officials had drawn up in recent weeks.<\/p>\n<p>Barrett, who accused his senior colleagues of being \u201cconniving\u201d and running a \u201ctoxic environment,\u201d said he eventually walked out of the meeting after being warned that if he left, he would be gone.<\/p>\n<p>Barrett added: \u201cMy opinion is 100 percent that I\u2019ve been sacked. I did not resign in paper, email or any other form. I walked out of her office.<strong> <\/strong>They were abusing me and bullying me.\u201d He made no suggestion that Farage was responsible for his sacking.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"651\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/GettyImages-2223310518-1024x651.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-6886308\"  \/>Reform UK leader Nigel Farage attends a meeting alongside the Head of Kent County Council, Linden Kemkaran, during his visit to the Reform UK group at Kent at Kent County Council at County Hall, Maidstone. | Gareth Fuller\/PA Images via Getty Images<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Disappointing\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Kemkaran pushed back at Barrett\u2019s criticism, saying in a statement Wednesday evening: \u201cNaturally it\u2019s always slightly disappointing when a colleague who\u2019s been given every chance to step up and improve their performance declines the opportunity and instead walks out of a meeting, knowing that it would mean they\u2019d lose their position.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The council leader added: \u201cWe have a new cabinet member for highways and transport firmly in place and as far as we are concerned it\u2019s business as usual, serving the people of Kent.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat I\u2019m not going to do is give a running commentary on the Members\u2019 positions here at KCC. We\u2019re simply getting on with the job.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Barrett also said that Kemkaran gave him one month to find cuts from a dossier on the highways&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":251172,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[748,1194,71774,2438,33,393,728,4884,38408,384,1144,391,48,23422,712,1263,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-251171","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"category-united-kingdom","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-budget","11":"tag-david-bull","12":"tag-department","13":"tag-elections","14":"tag-england","15":"tag-environment","16":"tag-great-britain","17":"tag-highways","18":"tag-nigel-farage","19":"tag-northern-ireland","20":"tag-opinion","21":"tag-rights","22":"tag-roads","23":"tag-scotland","24":"tag-transport","25":"tag-uk","26":"tag-united-kingdom","27":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=251171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251171\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/251172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}