If there isn’t exactly political tumbleweed rolling through the Garden of England, the electoral battle in Kent is rather low key - at least for the moment.

Back in 2015, you couldn’t move for VIP visits as a steady stream of the parties big hitters made their way to the county to drum up support.

Of course, that election was one that placed Kent at the heart of the battle with the Conservatives desperate to stop the then Ukip leader Nigel Farage from becoming MP in South Thanet.

This time, there is not the scale of attritional political trench warfare we saw back then and to date, the only visitor of note has been the Conservative education secretary Justine Greening.

Given the potential for the party’s policy pledge on new grammars being a potential flashpoint, the visit was kept under the radar.

As it turned out, she did meet with a group of heads to discuss various issues - but those discussions were dominated mostly by concerns over school budgets and how to attract more staff to take up jobs in Kent.

Whether the pace will pick up over the next four weeks remains to be seen but you wouldn’t bet on it.

With the Conservative grip on Kent dramatically underlined by their comprehensive rout at the KCC election, campaign managers have probably decided they can leave those controversial battle buses in the garage.

KENT County Council’s newly re-elected Conservative leader Paul Carter has the kind of mandate Theresa May dreams of.

There’s little doubt that he has consolidated his position as arguably the most influential Conservative leader in local government circles.

But will he - like Margaret Thatcher - go “on and on?”

It seems that he is reconciled to the fact that he won’t be leader forever, saying that he won’t wait to be pushed out.

Not that that looks like happening any time soon. “There is a big agenda ahead and I intend to be here for some time to come.”

Just in case anyone was planning a coup.

LABOUR has a new leader at County Hall after the party lost more than half its councillors.

He is Dara Farrell who is a professional DJ and plies his trade at various nightclubs in Kent, notably the Cameo club in Ashford.

When it was suggested that it would be a first for County Hall to have a councillor who was a DJ, we were surprised to learn it wasn’t.

The Gravesham councillor Bryan Sweetland posted a picture on Twitter featuring him behind the decks when he had a stint working for Radio Luxembourg - he reached the heady heights of being a stand-in presenter on Saturday nights.

And his DJ past prompted another fellow councillor to open up about his own brief career - Gary Cooke also bravely posted a picture of him looking distinctly 1970s.

Here it is:

PERHAPS it is for the best that attempts by the Green party to persuade the Lib Dems and Labour to have a single “progressive alliance” candidate foundered.

The Green candidate for Canterbury Henry Stanton berated them as “parochial and deluded” and said their intransigence had effectively handed the Conservatives victory.

A good platform on which to base future talks.