Reform UK's candidate for the Makerfield byelection, Robert Kenyon, has been revealed to have previously castigated Brexit as an economically self-harming project promoted by politicians who 'peddled the nationalistic pish'. The comments, unearthed on a defunct rugby league forum and first reported by the Telegraph, raise further doubts about his commitment to Nigel Farage's signature achievement.
Kenyon, a local plumber in Greater Manchester, made the remarks in the hours after the 2016 referendum result was announced. In the post, he wrote: 'All Brexit means is we’ve shot our economy in the foot for the short term, things will get back to the way they were and we will still end up under the same rules and regs of the EU as we always have but with no say in the matter.'
He added: 'The argument to leave was because the EU were unelected and we didn’t get a say, well that will carry on but with no say whatsoever. And add to that our glorious leader [David Cameron] has just thrown the towel in because of the mess he’s created. As [the Dad’s Army sitcom character] Captain Mainwaring would say: “Stupid boy”.'
Kenyon continued: 'Now we will have to pick up the pieces as always, they peddled the nationalistic pish and got [the] working class vote, bit silly if you ask me.'
These posts follow the emergence of another in which he said people would be wrong to assume he had voted for Brexit. Kenyon’s prolific online output on the rugby forum and on since-deleted X accounts has prompted a sequence of stories since he was selected to take on Labour’s Andy Burnham in the 18 June byelection.
In other posts, Kenyon expressed scepticism about vaccines and the seriousness of Covid; backed Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea; interacted with far-right figures; and endorsed a lewd comment about Carol Vorderman, for which the TV presenter has asked him to apologise.
Asked about the Brexit comments, Kenyon told the Telegraph that while he had voted for Brexit at the time, the decision to leave 'was a huge decision and people were entitled to ask serious questions about what came next and how the campaign was conducted on both sides'.
He added: 'In the years since, I have become convinced that we made the right decision, despite the same tired establishment trying to block, dilute and delay Brexit in order to pretend it had failed.'
Reform has defended Kenyon’s various posts as the views of someone who is not a professional politician and were made before he stood for election.
