Robert Kenyon has given his first interview since being named as Reform UK’s candidate for the Makerfield byelection, speaking to the Manchester Evening News at Reform’s campaign headquarters on an industrial estate in Goose Green. There was no apology for any of his documented social media history. He described his posts about Carol Vorderman as “a crude attempt at a joke.” He attacked Vorderman for her views on grooming gangs and trans rights. He admitted not knowing Reform’s Great Repeal Bill or being confident discussing their plans to scrap the Equality Act. And after the interview ended, Reform UK contacted the journalist separately to provide the party’s positions that Kenyon had been unable to explain himself.
The interview covers weeks of controversy that have accumulated since Kenyon was selected – neo-fascist Facebook connections, riot disinformation during the Southport murders, calls for waterboarding, “I’m sexist, sorry but I am,” a graphic sexual comment about Carol Vorderman, anti-abortion views, apparent non-voting in the Brexit referendum and a forum post endorsing Russia’s right to annex Crimea. As we reported across our investigations in the deleted accounts piece, the Vorderman piece, the RLFans sexism piece and the Russia Crimea piece, Reform has backed their candidate through every revelation.
Kenyon’s message in person is consistent with Reform’s own: he’s not polished, that’s the point, and he’s local.
The non-apology
On Carol Vorderman – who called him a “disgusting online abuser” and said she wouldn’t let him in her house as a plumber – Kenyon said: “I’m not a polished politician. I am rough around the edges. I have made mistakes in my life. I’m not perfect. Nobody is. Not a single person in the world is perfect.”
He described the post as “a crude attempt at a joke to probably about 50 followers. No offence was meant, and it’s not something I’d do now.”
When asked directly whether he would like to take the opportunity to apologise, he said: “I think I’ve addressed the issue. I think that no offence was meant and it wasn’t a direct comment to her. If you go into any building site in the area or any public barracks, I think you’d hear a hundred times worse said. It was just, like I said, a crass attempt at a joke and it’s not something I’d make now.”
Then he attacked her. “I’ve not heard much about Carol’s thoughts on Labour not having the grooming gangs inquiry last year or what she thinks about biological males being allowed into single sex spaces.”
The specific manoeuvre – declining to apologise, citing building sites and army barracks as equivalence, and then immediately pivoting to political attacks on the woman he insulted – is worth noting. Vorderman’s response to Kenyon’s original post was to document a pattern of misogynist online conduct, cite the Equality Act implications and raise Reform’s broader record on women’s rights. Kenyon’s response is to question her views on grooming gangs.
The policies he doesn’t know
The interview produced two specific admissions that Reform’s press team moved to address after the fact.
On Reform’s Great Repeal Bill – the centrepiece of their domestic economic policy, designed to counter Labour’s Employment Rights Act, ending fire-and-rehire rules, zero hours contract bans, sick pay from day one and real living wage protections – Kenyon said: “I’d have to have a real deep look into that.”
On Reform’s plans to scrap the Equality Act and its effects on workplace protections for women – which include pregnancy and maternity protections, equal pay rights and discrimination safeguards – he said: “Again, I’d have to have a good look into it to see which protections. I wouldn’t like to make a snap judgement on something so important.”
Both are core Reform policies. The Equality Act question is directly relevant to the weeks of coverage about Kenyon’s own documented views on women. Reform UK called the journalist after the interview had ended to provide their positions on both.
As we reported in our Kirklees council farce piece, Reform’s newly elected Kirklees councillors admitted not knowing what an amendment was. The Makerfield candidate not knowing his party’s flagship economic legislation and equalities policy is a different scale of the same issue.
The HMO claim – and what it actually says
One of Kenyon’s answers on immigration contained a specific claim that warrants attention. He said pubs closing in the area are “often bought cheaply by out of town developers” and converted into houses of multiple occupation for illegal immigrants. “We are being disproportionately used for HMOs for housing illegal immigrants,” he said.
He elaborated: “You could work all your life to buy a two-bed terrace and then a developer buys the next house to you and you get eight people living in that small house… So if you’re a young family, or you’ve got young kids, you might not want them to play in that garden because of the risk, you know, the safety risks.”
The specific implication – that parents should not let their children play near homes housing asylum seekers because of unspecified “safety risks” from people “whose culture you don’t know” – is the same framework Kenyon deployed in his pre-Southport social media activity, as we reported in our full investigation. When a local stabbing was committed by a Wigan resident who was charged, convicted and jailed, Kenyon told Wigan police on their own social media that it was evidence of an “illegal immigrant invasion.” The rhetorical pattern – anonymous threat, children at risk, “you don’t know” – is consistent.
The local pitch
Away from the controversies, Kenyon made his case clearly. He says he would be the first person born in the constituency to become its MP. He has lived in Makerfield his whole life. He worked as a plumber, an NHS specialist technician and in the Army reserves. He is a Wigan Warriors fan, a Muay Thai practitioner and his karaoke go-to is Go West’s King of Wishful Thinking.
His local policy priorities, if elected, include campaigning for a new hospital for Wigan, lobbying against greenbelt development, regenerating high streets in Ashton and Hindley and saving Ashton Library.
“I’ve not been parachuted in, I’m not using it as a stepping stone, I am not using it to further advance my career,” he said – a reference to his persistent accusation that Andy Burnham is using Makerfield as a route back to Westminster. As we reported in our Burnham popularity analysis, Burnham won 66.1% of the vote in Wigan at the 2024 mayoral election and is described by the Hamlet Wigan CIC as “one of the family.”
The Restore Britain threat
On Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain, polling at 7% in Makerfield according to one survey with candidate Rebecca Shepherd standing, Kenyon was direct: “If you do vote for Restore it could open the door for Andy Burnham to win. Like we saw in Runcorn, it came down to six votes. Every vote matters.”
The Runcorn comparison is apt. Reform won that byelection by six votes. The margin in Makerfield could be similarly tight, and any significant Restore vote drawn from Reform’s right flank changes the arithmetic meaningfully.
The question of whether any of this matters
The interview’s most revealing passage comes at the end, when Kenyon addresses why people are reluctant to enter politics. “I think it’s par for the course. People know that if you step foot into the spotlight, people are always going to have their two-penneth, they’re going to dig through everything that you’ve ever said. And I think that’s what puts people off getting involved in politics.”
This framing treats the revelations about Kenyon’s record as a feature of political life rather than a problem with his specific conduct. The riot disinformation, the waterboarding calls, the misogynist comments and the pro-Russia posts are not, in this telling, disqualifying. They are the price of public life. Everyone says things they regret. Building sites. Army barracks.
Whether the voters of Makerfield share that assessment or the assessment of the 76% of Britons who thought Hannah Spencer was right about MPs drinking, Carol Vorderman who called him a “disgusting online abuser,” or the 27 MPs who wrote to the EHRC about Reform’s Islamophobia record as we reported in our EHRC complaint piece – will be answered on 18 June.
You can watch the full interview below:
