Farage said Reform UK is examining whether Robert Kenyon’s sexist comments damaged the party’s Makerfield byelection result after the party finished more than 9,000 votes behind Andy Burnham. Nigel Farage called the outcome disappointing on Friday morning and said Reform had hoped to win at least 18,000 votes.
Andy Burnham won 55% of the vote share in Thursday’s vote, while Reform took 15,696 votes. Farage later said the party had been “slightly hoist with our own petard” and described the result as “A dramatic, emphatic win for Andy Burnham”.
Robert Kenyon and the campaign fallout
Robert Kenyon, Reform UK’s candidate and a local plumber, did not apologise for the comments. A Reform activist said, “That’s something that was not his fault, it was how he was advised”. Another Reform source said, “I will admit that the Vorderman stuff did not help us”.
Canvassers from different parties reported that voters raised sexist and lewd social media posts by Kenyon during the campaign, and women in particular said they were put off. The issue rose to prominence after he joined in a graphic discussion about Carol Vorderman in since-deleted posts. Vorderman used a video posted online to demand an apology from him.
Reform’s Makerfield calculation
Reform had expected a tightly fought contest in a seat described as more favourable to it than Labour, but Andy Burnham’s personal standing in Greater Manchester also shaped the result. That left Reform facing a narrower question than the headline defeat: whether the vote loss came mainly from Kenyon’s posts, or from Burnham’s position in the area.
Farage urged voters who supported Restore to back Reform instead, saying, “what do you want? We are the challenger party to the left in this country, and I would urge you to think again, I really, really would.” He also said Reform was “still the big national party on the centre right”. Rupert Lowe’s far-right Restore UK took just under 7% of the vote, while Kemi Badenoch’s party won the Aberdeen South byelection on Thursday. Farage ended his video message with, “A disappointing morning, but we keep going.”
