Reform put a rule into Kent County Council’s constitution requiring every full meeting to end with the national anthem. Nobody specified how much of it councillors actually had to sing. The Greens noticed.
At the first meeting where the new rule applied, everyone stood for God Save the King and sang the familiar opening verse. Reform councillors started gathering their papers. Green councillors, who’d turned up with lyric sheets covering all six verses, just kept singing. Some Labour and Lib Dem councillors joined in. Nothing in the rule said they couldn’t.
How the rule got there in the first place
Reform changed Kent’s constitution in May, adding a requirement that full council meetings end with the anthem. Reform took control of Kent in the 2025 local elections, initially winning 57 of 81 seats, and the authority became one of the party’s biggest tests of whether electoral success could actually translate into running a council.
That’s gone less smoothly since. Kent’s Reform group has been hit by internal rows, expulsions and defections since taking power, and its handling of council tax and its promised savings drive has faced real scrutiny too. The anthem rule was one of the constitutional changes brought in alongside all that. It just never included a one-verse limit.
Green councillor Mark Hood told Kent Current his group decided to take the new rule more literally than its authors expected. “The Green Group thought singing one verse of the National Anthem dedicated to only one person was a half measure. We decided to sing all six and invited colleagues to do likewise.” They didn’t finish, the chairman called proceedings to a halt during verse four. By then the point had landed anyway.
The subtitles made it even better
Nobody planned this part. Kent County Council’s livestream tried generating automatic subtitles while the opposition kept singing. It didn’t go well, instead of the actual (fairly obscure) lyrics to God Save the King, the system apparently decided it was hearing The Star-Spangled Banner and started producing American national anthem lyrics instead.
So Reform’s first outing for its compulsory anthem rule ended with Green, Labour and some Lib Dem councillors working through the obscure verses, Reform members packing up to leave, and the council’s own captions apparently deciding everyone had gone American. You couldn’t design a more distinctly British local-government row if you tried.
Reform wasn’t laughing
Council leader Linden Kemkaran called it “attention-seeking behaviour,” according to Kent Current. Reform councillor Robert Mayall shared footage claiming Green and Labour members had “decided to embarrass themselves.” Fellow Reform councillor Garry Sturley accused the opposition of “mocking our national anthem,” also calling it “attention-seeking behaviour.”
There’s an obvious problem with that complaint. Nobody refused to sing the anthem. They sang considerably more of it. And on Kent Current’s account, the constitutional rule never actually specified stopping after the one verse everyone already knows. The Greens just followed the instruction more literally than Reform apparently expected.
Hood didn’t even want this rule
There’s one more detail that makes this better. When the constitutional change was debated back in May, Hood had opposed it outright, arguing County Hall was “not the Last Night of the Proms.” Two months later, he and his colleagues were the ones still singing while some of the people who’d introduced the rule were already packing up to leave. Hard to accuse someone of insufficient anthem enthusiasm when they’re standing there holding a six-verse lyric sheet and you’re the one heading for the door.
Kent keeps becoming an awkward shop window for Reform
Funny story, messier backdrop. Reform hoped Kent would show what a Reform-run council actually looks like in practice. Instead the administration keeps making national headlines for infighting. Several councillors have left or been expelled, some going on to join Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain, and Kent has become one of the clearest examples in the wider run of Reform local-government departures this year.
Against that backdrop, a row over four verses of an anthem is fairly harmless by Kent’s recent standards. But as own goals go, it’s hard to beat writing a rule forcing your opponents to sing the national anthem, then getting annoyed when they sing too much of it. The American subtitles were just a bonus.
5 responses to “Reform ordered Kent councillors to sing the national anthem. The Greens found a very funny loophole”
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Verses 2 and 3 hardly fit the Reform playbook do they? Please Kent Council non-Deform councillors, keep singing the whole thing. You are wonderful!!
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If anyone is wondering about the reference to “rebellious Scots”, it was written in 1745 when there was a danger of London falling to Bonnie Prince Charlie. It started life as an ironic part of a theatrical production, in times when it really was ‘God save the king’.
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God save our gracious King,
Long live our noble King,
God save the King!
Send him victorious,
Happy and glorious,
Long to reign over us,
God save the King!O Lord our God arise,
Scatter our enemies,
And make them fall!
Confound their politics,
Frustrate their knavish tricks,
On Thee our hopes we fix,
God save us all!Not in this land alone,
But be God’s mercies known,
From shore to shore!
Lord make the nations see,
That men should brothers be,
And form one family,
The wide world o’er.From every latent foe,
From the assassins blow,
God save the King!
O’er his thine arm extend,
For Britain’s sake defend,
Our father, prince, and friend,
God save the King!Thy choicest gifts in store,
On him be pleased to pour,
Long may he reign!
May he defend our laws,
And ever give us cause,
To sing with heart and voice,
God save the King!Lord grant that Marshal Wade,
May by thy mighty aid,
Victory bring.
May he sedition hush,
And like a torrent rush,
Rebellious Scots to crush,
God Save the King.(Thanks Dave for verse 6)
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Verse 6: “Lord grant that Marshal Wade, May by thy mighty aid, Victory bring. May he sedition hush, And like a torrent rush, Rebellious Scots to crush, God Save the King.” 🙂
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