It is often said that one of the hallmarks of the Conservative party is its ruthlessness when it comes to ditching leaders who are regarded as having lost the winning touch.

It is this supposed instinct for survival that did for Lady Thatcher back in 1992. The current bout of turbulence within the party has inevitably led to speculation about whether, if he cannot pacify his critics, Mr Cameron could be heading for the exit door rather sooner than when voters go to the polls in 2015.

I am not sure. He is certainly having a rough time and perhaps the worst aspect of his troubles is that he looks like he is constantly on the back foot and rather reluctant to take on critics of his policies.

What is fascinating is that danger faces him on two flanks. Thatcher had to contend largely with a disgruntled Parliamentary party and notwithstanding the poll tax row, had a generally loyal following out in the constituency associations. Mr Cameron has contrived to upset both MPs and grass roots activists and it is hard to fathom who is more annoyed.

This doubles the jeopardy: MPs harbour grievances over lots of policy issues, many of which are of little interest to their rank and file activists. However, both the EU and gay marriage are agitating both camps which means Cameron is getting flak from all sides. And then there is the lurking threat of UKIP - seen by some as more Conservative than the Conservatives

After coming close to losing control of Kent County Council,  several Conservatives confided that they felt that making Mr Cameron leader had proved a disastrous mistake and they wished  David Davies had got the job.

That, of course, is the beauty of hindsight but their incandescence at being led by someone who they feel has trampled all over traditional Conservative values was palpable. 

Whether all this will lead to the party deciding that it is time to dump DC is anyone's guess. Europe remains a Conservative faultline and always will be.

The difficulty of Cameron's pledge to hold a referendum on the EU is that it is contingent on him winning an outright majority and not many Conservatives see that as happening.

But you do sense that there has been a serious fracture in the relationship between the leader and his party which could ultimately see the party deciding they have had enough.

If the sense that he won't produce a clean win in 2015 grows, the party might just throw their weight behind someone who it thinks could.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

UKIP will become the official opposition at Kent County Council on Thursday - historic for the reason that with 17 members, it has broken the three party stranglehold from a standing start.

Here is the shadow cabinet team:

Roger Latchford: Leader

Zeta Wiltshire: Deputy leader

Finance: Jeff Elenor

Mike Baldock: Transport + Environment

Chris Hoare: Corporate and Democratic Services

Hod Birkby: Economic Development

Mo Elenor: Adult Social Care

Adrian Crowther: Education and Health Reform:

Bob Neves: Community Services

:Frank McKenna: Commercial and Traded Services

Adrian Crowther who defected from the Tory group at County Hall and regained his Sheppey seat is an interesting choice for education. He has already spoken out about Conservatives trying to lure him back to the Tory fold.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

What is the future for Kent County Council's locality boards, set up barely two years ago? The answer: they don't have one, at least not in their current format.

An edict has gone out that all future meetings of these boards - one for each district - are suspended until a "review" has been carried out. A review that is certain to conclude they should be scrapped.

This is interesting in as much as they were ostensibly designed to devolve decision-making to local groups of county and district/ borough councillors - in line with the grand "localism" project beloved of Mr Pickles and the DCLG. In reality, they didn't actually take decisions -  leading to complaints they were simply talking shops.

These boards were inevitably packed with Conservatives when set up but clearly that would have had to have changed given the council's new political make-up.

We are sure the two are unrelated.

Unlike many, politicians have to re-apply for their jobs every four or five years and the decision about whether they should be re-appointed is in the hands of voters.

And voters can be rather unpredictable and prone to switch allegiances, as the recent county council election showed rather dramatically.

So, we should not be surprised that a number of Conservative backbenchers in the county voted last night for the 'rebel' amendment on the Queen's Speech.

There is nothing like a bruising mid-term electoral lashing to concentrate the mind and the Kent MPs who backed the amendment no doubt had given careful consideration to the dramatic UKIP surge in the county council election.

So, this was a convenient way of sending a message to the electorate that they are as sceptical about Europe as any UKIP candidate who might be on the ballot paper in 2015.

Their decision to blow a raspberry at Mr Cameron will prove particularly helpful in election literature to post through doors in a couple of years.

Conservative backbenchers in Kent know that the issue of Europe is not going to go away. Those who knocked on doorsteps during the recent election campaign found that Britain's membership of the EU and immigration were often not far from voters' thoughts.

While UKIP is unlikely to win Parliamentary seats at the next election, that is not the point. It is whether UKIP will cost them votes in sufficient numbers to lose them their seats.

Marginal seats like those in the Medway Towns, north Kent and Thanet have switched between Labour and the Conservatives over recent years and if there is one thing that current MPs fear it is that a split in the vote for the right will allow Labour back in.

Whether UKIP's surge will be durable is, of course, open to question.

But if the results of the recent election showed anything, it is that voters are deeply cynical about commitments made for some time in the future - and particularly cynical about promises to do things after the election.

MPs who backed the rebel EU amendment understood this. It might be considered gesture politics but it is inconceivable that they did not make a calculated decision that it was worth putting a marker down now - even if the election is two years away.

County Hall is a febrile place just now after the dust settles on the election that saw the ruling Conservatives come within a whisker of losing control. UKIP has confirmed its leader will be Roger Lachford, the former Conservative deputy leader of Thanet council.

But there are developments involving the other parties, too:

A Conservative cabinet reshuffle is underway and is expected to be officially announced later today.  Leader  Paul Carter has been forced to rejig his top team after the defeat of education cabinet member Mike Whiting. If my sources are correct, that job will go to the well-regarded Cllr Roger Gough, who interestingly is a Sevenoaks councillor and will take control of the council's efforts to open a new grammar school annexe in the area.

One of his key tasks will be to win over Michael Gove who for some reason many Conservatives find hard to fathom has stuck his oar in and decided the site Kent wants should be offered to a free school instead.

After the election hammering, Gove may just be open to the idea that it might not be such a bad thing to be seen to be supporting the scheme, given the fact that UKIP now seems more enthusiastic about selection than the national Conservative party.

The other change likely is that Cllr John Simmonds, who has the finance portfolio, will take on the job of being deputy leader, replacing the long-serving Tunbridge Wells councillor Alex King. Another interesting move (he will retain the finance job) and a sign of complete rapprochement between the two. We don't yet know why Alex King has gone but he has been in hospital with a fractured leg.

Over in the Labour camp and an unexpected leadership contest is looming. Cllr Mike Eddy, who regained the seat he lost in 2009 and was the former opposition leader before the party's meltdown is to challenge Gordon Cowan for the job of leadng the 13-strong group.

He says he has "unfinished business" but denies his bid for the role implies he feels that the party under-performed at the election, having forecast that it could capture 20 seats.

It will be interesting to see if any other names enter he fray - there is some suggestion that Cllr Roger Truelove, returned to Swale Central, could throw his hat in the ring. I am not sure a leadership contest is exactly what Labour need just now.

It might give the impression they are a divided group and it could be better to wait and see how UKIP acquits itself as a formal opposition group.

UKIP did not win control of any councils and three quarters of people who turned out did not actually vote for them. But it is a measure of the impact it had on the political landscape on Thursday that it has succeeded  in becoming the talking point in the debate about whether the the political map of Britain has been radically redrawn.

No mean achievement for a party dismissed as clowns, loonies and fruitcakes by their opponents.

The Kent County Council election  results and reaction>>>>

Nowhere was their success more shocking or stunning than Kent where against even the most optimistic predictions they came tantalisingly close to depriving the Conservatives of securing control of County Hall for the first time in two decades. From a standing start, they took seat after seat from the Conservatives, who were paralysed with anxiety that their grip on KCC was being loosened. To end up with more seats than Labour and the Liberal Democrats and become the formal opposition was truly staggering.

There are lots of reasons why UKIP did well and it may be that in Kent, sensitivities around issues like immigration and asylum seekers were more pronounced and resonated more with voters than elsewhere. It is telling that the areas where they did particularly well - Thanet and Shepway - are both places which have had deep rooted problems with economic deprivation and have also been areas where the impact of new communities have been seen and felt at first hand.

In fact, while the party did target Thanet, it did not have a concerted campaign in Shepway yet nearly pulled off a clean sweep of all five seats with very little canvassing. Gains in Swale - another area where the recession has hit - were also notable.The exception is the affluent west Kent town of Tunbridge Wells, where it also won seats.

More than that, UKIP has tapped into widespread voter antipathy and disenchantment with mainstream politics and mainstream political parties: its success has a lot to do with people regarding it as anti-establishment; anti-elite and somehow outside the system - a perfect repository for protest votes. But it has also tapped into a major issue that the big parties have spent too long pussy-foting around - Britain's role and future in the EU. The unwilllingnes of the main parties to be explicit (particularly in terms of time scale) about when people might be given a say has been devastating for them.

But after the euphoria of Thursday's results, there comes the cold reality of the consequences of suddenly finding yourself elected to office.

UKIP county councillors will troop into County Hall next week for an induction programme that will remind them that as locally-elected representatives, they will not be able - much as they like -  to spend the next four years banging on about an EU referendum and immigration. They will all be receiving allowances of around £13,000 to represent constituents whose interests may well be rather more parochial but no less important  - the state of their roads, school places, families dealing with difficult social services issues and planning.

The ability of UKIP to build on the momentum that it has will not be based on how loudly local councillors shout about the need for a referendum on Europe. If they want to be more than a flash in the pan and establish a secure position as a genuine political alternative, voters will need to be convinced they can tackle and influence policy in ways that affect - for the better - the 300 different services that Kent County Council provides. It will also be interesting to see how and if the 17-strong group, all newcomers with one or two exceptions, to the world of local government, remain a cohesive unit.

Parties that achieve success quickly and unexpectedly can sometimes find it awkward adjusting to the demands of being elected to public office and it was intriguing hearing in private how some Conservatives at KCC are already speculating over the prospects of "turning" some of the new UKIP councillors and returning them to the Tory fold.

The other challenge, allied to this, is that UKIP's USP - a movement outside the political system - has actually been undermined by their stunning success. They are, in a sense, no longer outsiders looking in at mainstream politics. If they believe the hype and really do consider they are part of a four-party system, then the consequence is that people will at a council level particularly be judging them on what they actually do rather than on what they say.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

For the Conservatives in Kent, the election was a sobering moment. Only once in its history have the Conservatives lost control of County Hall, back in 1993. That they came within a whisker of losing outright control last Thursday was a discomfiting experience, to put it mildy. In one sense, they were not being punished because of their track record over the last four years but were being punished for the perceived failings of the coalition, which is what they had expected.

But I do think that the party has to do more than blame the dismal results on mid-term blues. Senior Conservatives in Kent have been quick to turn their fire on the national leadership, with KCC leader Paul Carter being particularly damning - accusing some in his party at Westminster of acting more like Lib Dems than Conservatives.

Implicit in this is the idea that the party's woes can be dealt with by a lurch to the right. I am not so sure. The received wisdom so far as general elections are concerned is that they are won and lost in the middle ground. Tony Blair won three because he realised that in places like Kent, classic middle England territory, you had to appeal to the centre ground to deliver victory. 

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Labour has insisted that it is satisfied with the progress it has made in Kent but it fell short of its key objective: recapturing all the seats it had lost back in 2009.

For it to have shown it was making real advances, it should have won more and the fact that it has secured too few to even be the official opposition at County Hall is not where it wants or needs to be. Ed Miliband staked a lot by coming to traditional Tory heartland during the campaign but on these results, it seems the party still has a Southern Discomfort issue.

Their one hope may be that over the next four years, there will inevitably be  a handful of by-elections. The Tories need only lose a few seats for the arithmetic to be changed in a way that just might lead to the authority having a different rainbow coalition.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

We expect the jungle drums at County Hall to be beating with news of a Conservative cabinet reshuffle within a few days. The defeat of the well-regarded cabinet member for schools Mike Whiting means there will have to be changes. Education remains one of the key roles and there are many awkward issues looming, not least trying to persuade Michael Gove to back the KCC plans for a new grammar school.

The other gossip surrounds the future of the deputy leader Alex King, who was unable to be at his count after breaking his leg. It could be that his tenure as the reliable second-in-command could be coming to an end. If it is, perhaps the role could go to the Sevenoaks councillor Roger Gough - well-thought of, intelligent and potentially a good foil to the rather direct style of the current leader.

But I also think he'd make a good education cabinet member. And whenever I make these predictions, they usually turn out to be well wide of the mark so you might be advised to disregard them...

 UP-DATED, Thursday May 2.

If I knew who was going to take control of Kent County Council in tomorrow's election, I would, of course, be hurrying down to the bookmakers to place my house on the outcome.

But I don't and neither does anyone else - despite what the politicians are all telling me. There's nothing new or revelatory about that but the battle for Kent County Council's 84 seats is for once, much more unpredictable in 2013 than it was in 2009 when Labour went into meltdown as Gordon Brown's premiership was in its final death throes.

The unpredictability of the outcome has much to do with the high-profile campaign being waged by UKIP, not just in Kent but right across the country.

It is unusual for one party to have such a disproportionate impact on any election but UKIP has, for better or worse, been the dominant feature of this campaign. The media has been criticised for giving them too much publicity and for failing to subject some of their candidates and policies to greater scrutiny.

That may be  valid but so too is the fact that they are - like it or not - a party seeing a popular surge in support, just as the Social Democrats did in the 1980s and the Greens did when they made a breakthrough in the European Parliamentary elections in 1989.

Quite how it will perform on the day is anyone's guess. In Kent, the party has high hopes of making some kind of breakthrough but that could be anything from one seat to half a dozen or more. It could conceivably gain no seats and simply post a lot of 'good' second places.

In Kent, the party that has most to fear from UKIP is the Conservatives although it is true that it is disquieting both Labour and the Liberal Democrats, too.

It is a sign of the Conservatives' concern that recent days have seen one or two Kent MPs and Conservative candidates go on the offensive against the Nigel Farage gang, a tactic that may not be wise given that it has the effect of drawing more attention to a rival you would prefer voters to ignore.

The Conservatives' greatest fear is not just that UKIP will win seats but that its 70-plus candidates could cost them seats they would have expected to win.

That leaves open the tantalising prospect - or nightmare scenario for the current administration - of the Conservatives just failing to reach the 43 seats they need to continue running the council.

I see that as a long shot but given that no-one can tell how the votes will stack up on Friday, it is what makes this election rather more intriguing and interesting than it was back in 2009.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Even before the ballot boxes are emptied, the political spin doctors will be working out how to put the best complexion on the results. So, what would be a good result for each of the parties in Kent and how might they explain away a poor result?

Conservatives: Retaining control of County Hall with a comfortable, albeit smaller, working majority will be depicted as a good result, given these are mid-term elections. Losing control, or being forced into some kind of joint administration, would be a pretty gruesome result but could be blamed on the national political picture, the recession and the unpopularity of some Conservative policies, notably gay marriage and the EU referendum being held back until 2017.

Labour: A result that sees it recapturing the seats it lost in 2009 and taking a couple more would be a good result and probably enough for the party to claim that it is winning back support in the critical middle England territory. Falling short of that would be awkward but will probably be blamed on voter antipathy to all the mainstream political parties rather than a vote of no confidence in Ed Miliband.

Liberal Democrats: Has made it clear that is has modest aspirations and retaining its seven seats on KCC would probably be portrayed as a decent outcome. Anything that sees their numbers shrink might start hares racing about Nick Clegg's leadership. Likely spin: "We are now part of the government and that is different to being in opposition. Voters have used the election to give us a message."

UKIP: Given the hype and publicity surrounding the campaign, a failure to win any seats would be a disappointing outcome. Breaking through and taking a handful away from the Conservatives would be a good result. Likely spin if no seats won: "We increased our share of the vote; these elections were really a staging post before next year's European elections; we have a solid base of support to build on."

The Green Party: A very good result would be winning a seat somewhere in the county; a good result would be increasing their share of the vote above 2009.

It has not been a good week for Kent's police commissioner Ann Barnes, after a spectacular public relations car crash over the appointment and then swift resignation of her 17-year-old youth tsar, Paris Brown.

There are arguments on both sides about the events but no-one can deny that the normally sure-footed commissioner has had a setback.

After a day or so basking in generally positive coverage of her appointment, her team was forced on the defensive in the face of a media maelstrom that raised questions about her judgement and the perceived failings of the recruitment process.

Worse, it had triggered two separate police inquiries and a request for a report from a cross-party group of councillors.

And on top of that, suggestions of a degree of tension between the force and the commissioner.

The entrails of this grisly saga have been well and truly poured over. One issue it has vividly illustrated is that commissioners are acting in quite different ways to police authorities.

The government argued that the concept of directly-elected police chiefs was better than a system in which anonymous, largely unknown and appointed police authorities had responsibility for strategic governance. Hard to argue with.

The trouble is that anyone elected to public office has, in the back of their minds, just what the voters will think of them when they next go to the ballot box.

And it is this that in some senses has arguably been at the root of the commissioner's difficulties this week. The idea of a youth commissioner appeared to be a good one and certainly played well - at last initially - with the media and public.

Had it worked out, you can bet safely that the initiative would have featured heavily in Ann Barnes' election publicity in 2016.

The question is: would a police authority - for all their faults - have championed the idea? Kent to my knowledge never did and neither has it been something the chief constable has ever exhorted.

But elected politicians know they are accountable to voters and are always seeking initiatives that will mark them out as distinctive.

Unfortunately, they run the risk - as in this case - of being accused of gimmicks or PR stunts in the cause of enhancing their own reputation.

Strategic governance and keeping an eye on the money is what commissioners are really about but it is not awfully sexy.

Which is why we are seeing some of these more colourful ideas being promoted. It actually adds to the public's confusion over their role - it is already evident that many misunderstand the powers of commissioners, equating them with sheriffs riding into town and clearing out the hoodlums. 

And unfortunately, when you court publicity, it can sometimes backfire.

If UKIP was a band, it would probably be the type that comfortably fills mid-size venues but hasn't quite reached the point at which it is capable of selling out big stadium tours. There is a sense in which its supporters are a bit like fans who consider they are in on the next big thing but might actually be a bit regretful if it became a mainstream success.

But there's no doubt plenty of people think it is on the cusp of making the crossover from cult band to chart toppers. Its PR people like to talk about a buzz around the party, a bit like A and R men.

A measure of this progress will, of course, be how it fares at the county council elections.

And the leadership has its eye on Kent as somewhere it can create a few ripples. It is fielding 76 candidates out of 84 - a record number and judging by the unbridled spirit of optimism at the launch of its Kent manifesto on Friday night in Gravesend, many think County Hall will have its first elected UKIP county councillors come May 3.

Actually, the event was not so much a manifesto launch (not much was mentioned about Kent at all) as much as a rally designed to raise spirits for the battle ahead.

More than 300 activists and supporters crammed into a hotel room to listen to Nigel Farage deliver a characteristically flamboyant and colourful speech, in which he fired broadsides at all the mainstream parties (Cameron - "no-one will ever believe him again"; Clegg - "hopeless"; Osborne - "hopeless"; Angela Merkel - "more miserable in private than she is in public"; Miliband - "who cares?") and declaimed like a evangelical preacher that the party's time had come.

Say what you like about him, but he certainly knows how to find a key part of the party's anatomy (in the way it was said of Michael Heseltine and the Tories).

One of his quips about his critics was telling: "They're writing me off as a populist now!" because it touched on why the three mainstream parties are so concerned aboout UKIP.  It has successfully exploited the widespread disenchantment with the big parties among voters who think they all look the same and say the same. It is that disaffection that meant second place in the Eastleigh by-election was depicted as a victory.

The forthcoming elections come at a good time for UKIP: mid-term in the life of any government is a bad time to be going to the polls for those in power and UKIP is picking up support from many Tories in the shire counties that disapprove of the party's position on gay marriage and harbour fears over the impact of immigration.

It has certainly leapfrogged the Lib Dems as the preferred repository of the protest vote. More than that, there is the fact that they have a much more organised campaign and activists willing to trudge the streets with leaflets - the kind of foot soldiers every party needs. And it already has councillors in Tunbridge Wells.

So, you can understand why it feels bouyant. I think the issue, however, is that while it could significantly build on its share of the vote across Kent it may end up in second place in lots of areas, just falling short of victory.

Nigel Farage is typically robust in his assessment, saying it would be a major surprise if Kent - his home county - doesn't have UKIP county councillors next month. He won't say but the target areas are Thanet and Tunbridge Wells, with north Kent also in its sights.

When I asked him if he would have a bet on UKIP holding the balance of power at County Hall, he said he would have to look at the odds. But his smile suggested it may be something the party has contemplated as a possibility.

Such a result is the UKIP dream scenario and the Conservatives' nightmare, which accounts for the current jitters in Tory ranks.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Among UKIP's candidates is another defecting Tory.  Roger Latchford, who was at one point deputy Conservative leader of Thanet council, has defected and will contest the Birchington and Villages division in Thanet.

Another former Tory, Brian Ransley, once a cabinet member in Tunbridge Wells council until he lost his seat to the Lib Dems, is standing in Tunbridge Wells North.

If you are a political party in charge of a council that has just set a budget with savings of £95m, what would be the last thing you might be want to be seen doing a few weeks later?

How about giving a contract to consultants that could be worth £5.4m?

 And on top of that, awarding the contract to a company to help decide how best to achieve £18m savings from services you provide for some of the most vulnerable adults in society?

Savings, incidentally, that you already know are deeply unpopular with voters because you carried out a consultation about them in the Autumn. That is precisely the awkward position that the Conservative administration at County Hall is in. It has set in train a process it probably wishes it could halt until after May 2 but hasn't been able to.

 At its heart is the proposal to appoint what social services chiefs euphamistically describe as a "transformation and efficiency partner"  to advise on how best the £18m savings can be delivered. In other words, consultants from outside the authority and possibly the county who will  be drafted in to identify just what KCC needS to do.

No wonder there is a bit of a stink about it.

 The proposition was the subject of a report tabled to a backbench cross-party committee last week, which was asked to approve a recommendation that the Conservative cabinet go ahead with the appointment of an unnamed company.

There was a brief debate in the public part of the Social Care and Public Health committee before the chairman decided that some comments were straying into territory that might compromise the authority's financial interests.

What we do know is that  in that private debate, opposition to the plan came not from just the usual suspects but from several Conservatives who were, to put it mildly, somewhat concerned about the whole idea.Some asked why it was necessary to bring in outside consultants in the first place and why KCC seemingly lacks the capacity and expertise to deliver a key part of its budget.

Others were unhappy about the fact they felt they were being bounced into endorsing the idea without a proper evaluation or discussion; some were simply horrified that the adminstration was embarking on such a path with the election a few weeks away.

The result was that - highly unusually for this type of committee - a vote was taken, after a motion tabled by the opposition Labour representative Les Christie to recommend that the cabinet not proceed with the appointment. Even more unusually, the proposal was supported by several backbecnh Conservatives with the result that the chairman Cllr Chris Smith was  forced  to use his casting vote to ensure Labour's alternative proposal was defeated.

 What does this tell us? Well, self-evidently there is serious disquiet in the Tory ranks about it all.

 It also tells us that maybe KCC isn't quite sure itself how it will manage to deliver the £18m savings and probably did not at the time it announced them - after all, if it did, why would it now need consultants to do the work for it?

 It might also be said that perhaps KCC, in its rush to cut jobs to save money, did so with a rather misplaced enthusiasm and ended up losing people who took with them years of experience and knowledge.

What happens now? The Conservative cabinet member for adult social care Graham Gibbens is reflecting on the comments of his collegues and weighing up what to do. He is a decent and straight politician and won't be enjoying his present discomfiture.

Either way, KCC has a serious addiction issue so far as consultants are concerned, seemingly believing they are the solution to any number of different problems.

It could do with weaning itself off them.

UP-DATED

PROPOSALS for a shake-up of Kent's often divisive 11-plus came under the spotlight today (Tuesday) when county councillors discussed the outcome of a review by headteachers designed to get a consensus around possible changes.

The review was set up primarily to see if anything can be done to counter the widespread coaching culture that everyone - even the Conservative administration at KCC - now generally acknowledges is far too prevalent in Kent and has skewed the system so much in parts of west Kent that it can seem that only those who actually do have some kind of  private tuition are guaranteed a place.

KCC outlines changes to the eleven plus test>>>

Perhaps we should not be surprised that county councillors were a little pessimistic about the odds of countering the coaching culture, although most commended Kent County Council's efforts to try and level the playing field.

Education director Patrick Leeson said the reforms were not about a "new" test but a "better, more fit for purpose set of assessment materials." 

Cllr Mike Whiting explained that KCC recognised no test could be immune from coaching but "it was the right thing to do to make the test fairer for everyone."

Those most sceptical were the opposition parties. For Labour, Cllr Les Christie said he sympathised with the aims but said the idea that those with the means would find a way to improve the chances of their child passing. "People with the means will find a way round it."

Liberal Democrat leader Cllr Trudy Dean said "unfortunately, there is no holy grail here" and quoted our stroy about the number of places being allocated to children from fee-paying schools (40% in some cases) saying "that is going backwards, not forwards."

At first glance, the proposals are rather modest. In fact, there is very little on the paper setting out KCC's thoughts that deals directly with the issue of coaching.

There are  reasons for this. The most obvious is that whatever else KCC might do with the exam, the idea that it can really be completely tutor proof is a non-starter. KCC has shifted its language slightly on this over recent months, perhaps recognising that it was rather over-optimistic at the outset.

It started off by saying it wanted a test  immune from coaching - to the extent that it was suggested that shops like W H Smith could be banned from selling practice papers - and edged towards a position where it aid it wanted a test that was less susceptible to coaching.

You won't get anything specific in the report about exactly how this objective will be achieved. However, Cllr Mike Whiting, the Conservative cabinet member for education, says the general aim will be to align the test more closely to what primary school children learn on the curriculum as part of the Sats. 

That reflects the valid concern that some elements of the test - noticeably non-verbal reasoning - are not ordinarily taught at state primary schools and an advantage can be secured by those that can afford tutors to instruct them on the techniques and familiarise themselves with the questions that come up.

So, adjusting the test in ways that mean you should not require coaching - which, it should be noted, is explicitly ruled out by KCC - ought to level the playing field a little.

But I suspect not by much.

Such is the determination of some parents to secure grammar places for their children, it is hard to see how this modest change will diminish the thriving commercial coaching industry.

Tutors will simply shift the emphasis of their servics  - and indeed, some already advertise that they also are able to coach children to improve their SATs results.

Fine-tuning the 11-plus to bring it more into line to reflect Sats begs the obvious question: why not rely on the Sats results in the first place - a thought advanced by quite a few headteachers in Kent who took part in the review? The answer, apparently, is that we now have admissions that are governed by a national timetable and it would be impossible to devise a system of offering places not knowing how well pupils had performed in their Sats (not a problem for university allocations though).

The additional problem is that the Sats would become the same kind of focus for pressure on pupils and schools.

 It is hard to see how the problem many grammars now complain about - namely, that pupils who have been over-coached struggle once they get to grammar school  - would necessarily be moderated by any of the changes being suggested.

KCC does deserve some credit for trying to do something about the eleven plus and its belated recognition that far from improving social mobility, the Kent system militates against it.

But it has rather tip-toed timidly around the edges of the issue, which in a way is about all it might have been expected to. 

It is worth remembering that this is KCC's third review of the 11-plus in the last few years.

The first two saw no changes at all, as those wrestling with the seemingly intractable problems of how to create a level playing field for children realised that the only option was the nuclear one – in other words, scrapping it altogether.

To say that Conservatives at County Hall are miffed is something of an understatement.

The news that the government has intervened to say that the site Kent County Council wanted for a new grammar school annexe in Sevenoaks should instead be offered to a free school has gone down like a lead balloon.

Wrangle over Kent's grammar school plan >>>

This is, after all, a Conservative government where there remains plenty of residual support for selective schooling and plenty of backbenchers who think that among David Cameron's' most catastrophic decisions was to turn the party away from supporting the return of the 11-plus.

The irony here is that KCC had come up with a plan, widely supported by local parents, for additional grammar school places in an area without a selective school. It is consistent with the government's own policy of allowing existing schools to expand where there is an issue of lack of places.

The problem is that the coalition has another policy to deal with unmet parental demand and that is free schools.

And on this occasion, at least for the moment, free school plans are deemed more important. So, the Kent case for more grammar places has been undermined by a decision by the schools minster that the Sevenoaks site of the former Wildernesse School be handed to the proponents of the Trinity Free School.

Why? Partly, I supect, because the government is concerned that it is way off its target for several hundred free schools to be open by 2015 and wants to maximise "buy in" from those behind such plans for new schools. And while selection is important in Kent and a few other areas, it is not across most of the rest of the country where grammars do not exist.

The government is desperate to promote the idea that parents can do something to enhance choice by opening free schools and it is a message that has much greater resonance with parents where grammars are not a feature of the local education lanscape as they are in Kent. 

County Hall Tories are livid not least because they see a political dividend from being seen to support more grammar places, which like it or not, remain extremely popular with parents here. With an election in May, they were probably hoping to plaster election leaflets with the claim that they were acting to respond to parents' wishes by extending selection.

And the decision to offer the site to a free school is the worst example of top-down politics which will raise all sorts of questions about the government's commitment to localism and not interfering with councils. KCC has had other tussles with the secretary of state Michael Gove, notably over the scrapping of the BSF project. It joined a legal action brought by other councils challenging the decision and it was not welcomed by Mr Gove.

Now KCC is suggesting it might have to go into battle through the courts again on a fairly arcane issue surrounding the question of whether the government has correctly interpreted its own legislation about handing sites to others for schools where the site is already occuppied by another school (albeit temporarily).

The view from the campaigners is that the Sevenoaks plan for more grammar places is not dead in the water and that once Mr Gove is apprised of the background he will be won round to seeing the case.

Given the rather fractious relationship he has had with KCC and its leadership in the past, he may need some convincing.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

It would be interesting to know exactly when KCC was aware of the government's thinking on the move to offer the site at the former Wildernesse School to the backers of the Trinity Free School.

KCC was very keen to let everyone know that it had chosen the site for its grammar annexe and got into a spot of bother about it - it now looks rather like a pre-emptive strike although one that has yet to pay off.