Reform UK’s Makerfield by-election candidate didn’t vote for Brexit in the 2016 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 that include sexist language and transphobic slurs.
The issue of EU relations has become a key battleground in Makerfield, which voted 65 per cent in favour of Brexit a decade ago when Mr Farage led the campaign for the UK to leave the bloc.
But in 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, [am] a Tory and 103 is wrong. I’m none of the above.”
The remarks were made by an account under the username “post”, which reveals 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****ing myself to what was voted for”, but the EU’s subsequent treatment of the UK made them “glad we voted out”.
The account said they would join the EU “tomorrow” if it was “stripped right back to what it was set up for”, and also stated: “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.”
A spokesperson for Reform UK said 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”.
Mr 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 panels aren’t up to the job and only there to tick a box”. It also said women’s Super League players are “no where near the standard” to be commentating on games.
In another post on the now-deleted robkenyon1 X account, he shared a sexually explicit post sent to Carol Vorderman on her birthday, in which another user declared he wanted to perform a sexual act on the presenter.
Another user responded to the post, saying: “If you’re prepared to put this on a public forum, I would suggest that your computer drive probably needs checking.”
But @robkenyon1 replied: “He’s only saying what we’re all thinking.”
Vorderman condemned the comments, telling The Mirror: “Fundamentally, Rob Kenyon is a misogynist.”
She added: "He's not just being a lad, he's being a disgusting online abuser who became a Reform councillor three weeks ago.”
A 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.”
