Was Reform's Makerfield by-election candidate... a Remainer?

Reform’s rather unpleasant candidate for the forthcoming Makerfield by-election has so far escaped the sack despite a series of his vile social media messages being exposed. But now Robert Kenyon has been accused of something taken far more seriously by Nigel Farage – he may have been a Remainer.

It has emerged that Kenyon, the Wigan councillor and plumber selected to take on Andy Burnham, had previously claimed he did not vote for Brexit and praised European freedom of movement on social media.

In a social media post dating from March 28, 2019, an account attributed to Kenyon rejected suggestions that he was a stereotypical right winger. He wrote: “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.”

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The account was attributed to Kenyon through references to his X/Twitter handle, “robkenyon1”, a later entry promoting “my debut novel” as The Blood Waltz by Rob Kenyon, and repeated references consistent with his work as a plumber and gas engineer. On the same forum – intended to be about rugby league – he 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 same account was also said to have made a series of sexist comments about women, including posts in which Kenyon said: “I’m sexist, sorry but I am. Women can’t ref, drive or give directions.” Other posts appeared to have referred to 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”.

Other posts attributed to the same account appeared to show Kenyon expressing strongly anti-abortion views, the account writing that women seeking abortions were “deciding to kill a baby inside the womb” and describing many abortions as being for “vanity purposes like unwanted pregnancies”.

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And these follow Kenyon’s sharing of a particularly obscene message from a man eager to“smell and lick” a part of TV presenter Carol Vorderman’s anatomy, to which Kenyon added: “He’s only saying what we’re all thinking.”

All very embarrassing for Reform, but particularly for its MP Danny Kruger, who went out on the airwaves to bat for Kenyon at the weekend.

Kruger insisted the repugnant Vorderman comments were “private” and those of an “ordinary” man, adding of the remarks published publicly on a social network: “I’m not going to judge people for what are essentially regarded at the time and intended as private conversations.”

Might this be the same Danny Kruger who told Politico this year how a Reform government he would be part of would “undo the sexual revolution” of the 1960s and attacked the UK’s “totally unregulated sexual economy”, suggesting an aggressive policing of private lives? It is indeed!