REFORM UK have defended their candidate in the Makerfield by-election for being “friends” with a neo-fascist leader.
Robert Kenyon was selected by Nigel Farage’s party to stand against Andy Burnham in the upcoming Westminster by-election south of the Border on Tuesday.
However, they were soon facing questions about his social media usage, including why he had formerly been Facebook friends with Gary Raikes – the founder of the fascist “New British Union”, a group which advocates for a "fascist revolution".
As The National reported on Tuesday, a Facebook screenshot showed that Kenyon’s friend list had included Raikes, whose profile image included the words “New British Union”.
On May 14 – five days before he was named as Reform UK’s Makerfield candidate – Kenyon updated his publicly available Facebook page to say: “Hi, I’m moth balling this account so have removed all my friends on there.”
That account was deleted The National reported on its previous connection to Raikes.
Initially asked for a response, Reform UK said there were not “any sort of screenshots to evidence your claim” that Kenyon and Raikes had been Facebook friends. They added: “Do you have any?”
The party was then supplied with the unredacted version of the screenshot above.
Later, they issued a statement defending Kenyon.
"A Facebook friend does not constitute an endorsement of his views,” Reform UK spokesperson said.
"Robert Kenyon is a brilliant candidate and we are proud to have him represent the party. British politics needs more real people involved like Robert."
A Labour spokesperson said: "These are serious and deeply troubling allegations. Nigel Farage needs to urgently come clean on whether Reform were aware of his candidate's apparent fascist friends.
"Robert Kenyon must also explain himself to those he is seeking to represent. What is his relationship with this man? Voters in Makerfield and across Britain deserve an answer."
In 2024, when Searchlight magazine first identified Kenyon’s links to Raikes, The Times then reported that 41 of Reform’s candidates in the General Election were Facebook friends with the neo-fascist leader.
Challenged on the story in 2024, Farage told Good Morning Britain: "Look, most of our candidates are not political sophisticates. Alright?"
Elsewhere, the Conservatives highlighted that Kenyon’s former Twitter/X account – under the name Makerfield_RFK – had been suspended.
“Care to explain what Robert had his Twitter account suspended for?” the party’s press office wrote on social media.
On Tuesday, Metro reported that Kenyon’s posts were visible through an online tool that saves deleted posts on Twitter/X.
In now-unavailable posts, Kenyon had claimed that the far right “don’t really exist” and that UK citizens were “being put at risk due to the invasion of foreign criminals”.
In another deleted tweet, Kenyon further wrote: “We colonised America, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and Rhodesia. But we didn’t colonise India.”
A Reform spokesperson told Metro they would “not investigate” Kenyon.
Previously, Reform UK leader Farage has also been accused of holding fascist views, with numerous schoolmates and teachers alleging that he had bullied Jewish people, sang Nazi songs, and said slogans such as "Hitler was right" while at the private school Dulwich College.
