Reform UK’s Makerfield by-election candidate voted Remain in the 2016 Brexit referendum, newly unearthed online posts suggest.
Robert Kenyon, who is running as Nigel Farage’s candidate in the contest against Labour’s Andy Burnham, has been under intense scrutiny in recent weeks over a series of resurfaced social media posts, which have included sexist language and transphobic slurs.
The issue of EU relations has become a key battleground in the Makerfield contest, which voted 65 per cent in favour of Brexit a decade ago, and Reform UK leader Mr Farage famously led the campaign for the UK to leave the bloc.
But in further now-deleted posts from 2019, Mr Kenyon, a plumber, appeared to deny that he voted leave.
An account linked to Mr Kenyon wrote on a rugby league fan forum: “So anyone who thinks I love Trump, voted Brexit, read the Daily Mail, live in the 1950s, a Tory and 103 is wrong. I’m none of the above.”
open image in galleryThe remarks were made by an account under the username ‘post’, which says in other comments that their Twitter handle is @robkenyon1 and promotes Mr Kenyon’s book, The Blood Waltz.
In other posts, the account said they “woke up the day after Brexit s******g myself to what was voted for”, but said the EU’s subsequent treatment of the UK made him “glad we voted out”.
He said he would join the EU “tomorrow” if it was “stripped right back to what it was set up for”, and also wrote: “Free movement of people is great when they are natives of the EU countries and not people from outside Europe seeking a Greek passport that will allow them into any country in the EU.”
The Independent has contacted Mr Kenyon and Reform UK for a comment, but a spokesperson for the party told The Times Mr Kenyon “voted Leave in 2016 and is a proud Brexiteer, unlike Andy Burnham who will drag the UK back into the EU by any means possible”.
open image in galleryMr Kenyon has also been accused of making “degrading” comments about women in another series of resurfaced online posts.
The same account also wrote in 2011 that women can’t “ref, drive or give directions” and declared: “I’m sexist, sorry but I am.”
Posts made on an online rugby fan forum in the 2010s objectified European women’s bodies while saying English women “don’t care” and “just walk around with their fat bellies and odd shapes pushing a pram at 16 in their PJ’s”.
In 2019, responding to a discussion over women presenting matches on Sky, the posts stated: “The women on the panel’s aren’t up to the job and only there to tick a box” and said women’s super league players are “no where near the standard” to be commentating on games.
open image in galleryA spokesperson for Reform UK did not dispute the resurfaced comments but instead dismissed them as “locker room banter”.
“These comments, which are little more than locker room banter, were made more than a decade ago – well before Rob was in politics,” a Reform UK spokesperson said.
“We simply don’t care about establishment hit jobs. We fully back Rob and are confident he will be an excellent MP for Makerfield.”