Why is Reform standing by a 'sexist' candidate in Makerfield?

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1:03Lewis Goodall:This is a Global Player original podcast. Rob Kenyon, who is Reform's candidate in the Makerfield by-election, has described himself as a sexist.

1:11Emma Burnell:Transphobic slurs, Covid misinformation or sexism, and the response you get back from Reform is normally, stop trying to make him sound like a normal politician. He's a lad.

1:22Lewis Goodall:I woke up the day after Brexit shitting myself as to what was voted for. So in some ways, Robert Kenyon, an unlikely channeler of Remain Opinion. I was born in Makerfield. If I was elected, I'd be the first person born in the constituency to become the MP. I don't think any MP that's ever stood in Makerfield was actually born in the area. I'm a plumber, gas engineer. I've done that for a long time. I did my apprenticeship when I was 18. I love being a plumber. I do enjoy it. It's hard, but I do enjoy it because I do take pride in the work. I don't know, it gets me a bit emotional sometimes, thinking there's a chance that I could be representing people in Parliament because it's a massive honour and people will be thinking, oh, in a minute, he serviced my boiler last week.

2:03Lewis Goodall:Rob Kenyon, the reform candidate in the upcoming by-election, is from Makerfield. He is a plumber. He is self-made. He is also, in his own words, a sexist. Does anyone even care anymore? Welcome to the News Agents.

2:25Lewis Goodall:The News Agents. It's Lewis. It's Maitlis. And this is what seems now a sort of daily and even more than that set of revelations about Robert Kenyon. As we say, Reform UK's candidate in the maker field by election, as we say, accused of sharing, among other things, online on his X account and other social media accounts, transphobic slurs, COVID misinformation, objectifying women in now deleted social media posts. A lot of this stuff has been discovered by the campaigners Hope Not Hate. In one post, the account that Robert Kenyon had shared a sexually explicit post sent directly to the TV presenter Carol Vorderman on her birthday, in which another user declared he wanted to perform a sexual act on the presenter.

3:19Lewis Goodall:Another user reported 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 the wannabe Makerfield MP replied saying he's only saying what we're all thinking. He also separately has been reported has attacked women as being promiscuous and accused them of taking any decision to have an abortion lightly. He wrote reproductive rights, women's rights. They can dress it up all they want. They're deciding to kill a baby inside the womb. What they mean is they want to shag anyone they want. And if they get caught, they get a second chance and treat it as a secondary last form of contraception.

4:07Lewis Goodall:They ain't kidding anyone. Perhaps this explains why he in a separate post said, I'm a sexist. That's what I am.

4:15Emma Burnell:Look, I think this takes us to the place that so many of us have been already, which is you talk about transphobic slurs or COVID misinformation or sexism. And the response you get back from reform is normally, oh, stop trying to make him sound like a normal politician. He's a lad. It's locker room bans. Locker room not being a phrase or indeed a thing that we ever actually talk about in the UK. It virtually doesn't exist. And sure enough, Richard Tice, who's the party's deputy leader, has come out this week and called it Westminster, Rokerati, whining lefties, failing to understand that Makerfield likes real men.

4:59Emma Burnell:And I think the truth about this is it's not just whether he's friends of a fascist. You know, that was the first thing that followed him when he was announced. It's not just that he's slightly sexist. It's that he sounds utterly creepy to women. And once you understand the sort of the value, the horror of what he's actually saying, I just think it sort of calls on not just women voters, but anyone to say, oh, my God, sorry, you're talking about abortions as vanity projects. You're talking about abortions as things that slags have. Now, there is a whole argument. There is a whole argument, a proper political debate to be had about the length of gestation in abortion.

5:49Emma Burnell:And that argument is going on, as we know, the world over. And there are many ways to have it in a really thoughtful and sort of heartfelt way if you think, as many people do, that abortion is murder. But to come at it just by calling women slags, by come at it calling them a vanity project, I just wonder what you are doing to your own vote if you're not absolutely tanking it. Because I just can't imagine a world in which, you know, men think that's a particularly attractive way of talking about women either, or whether you think that you're kind of representing somebody to go into Parliament for you that is going to advocate with a kind of proper argument behind what they're saying.

6:36Emma Burnell:So this is starting to build into a really interesting question, which is how reform respond to him. Do they get rid of him? Do they just say, OK, you know, we thought he was a cheeky, chappy plumber, but actually he's got some horribly dodgy, creepy views. And indeed, I think Zia Youssef, who's the chairman, has come out straight away and said this is not reform policy. You know, he was speaking before he was a politician and now he's a politician. He doesn't sort of speak for reform. But the other funny thing, which is just worth dwelling on for a moment, is his pre-politician political beliefs, which The Times has dug up today, which suggests that he didn't actually vote for Brexit.

7:22Emma Burnell:and the party's now trying to reconcile the guy who they think they're putting into the middle of this sort of very brexit-y part of the world i mean we can come on to that whether it is or not with the idea they've got this candidate who actually was quite pro-immigration the sort of the west street in Canada of makerfield and so now you've got this party trying to work out whether they do they carry on going on about woke karate and oh he's just a normal lad or do they have to shut down the fact that he didn't even apparently vote for Brexit in the first place, which seems to kind of go against everything that their party stands for.

7:56Lewis Goodall:Indeed, the Times is saying that Robert Kenyon said in 2019, as you say, Emily, that he did not vote for Brexit, which is certainly an unusual position for a former candidate. In fact, the quote is similarly direct as some of the other language we've seen from Mr Kenyon. He says, anyone who thinks I love Trump voted Brexit is wrong. I woke up the day after Brexit shitting myself as to what was voted for. So in some ways, Robert Kenyon, an unlikely channeler of remain opinion across the country. So in a way, you know, they say they're a big tent and they are getting bigger. That is nice to see.

8:29Lewis Goodall:What is obviously disturbing, though, is some of the language that at least he appears to have endorsed, as we say online, which is you say, Emily, I think there seems to be two categories of stuff that has been dug up about him. And I do have some sympathy. I mean, I have some sympathy with the idea that, you know, in this modern age that we're living, he's not a particularly old guy. I think he's in his late 30s. I have some sympathy with the idea that, you know, ordinary people, quote unquote, online before they go into politics, they do tend to use social media differently to those with really big accounts, right?

9:03Lewis Goodall:We kind of forget this. I think, you know, those people in Westminster, journalists, politicians, and so on, we're used to sort of using our accounts like we're very much in the public gaze the entire time we treat the public and the private the same it is true to say that the vast vast vast majority of people who use even something like x they might have like 50 followers 100 followers 200 followers it's basically friends and family right and maybe some other randoms and they kind of do treat it and use it like just whatever comes into their head stream of consciousness and don't expect to be scrutinized about it and i do think some of the things he said look distasteful like you know what I would sort of describe as, and I'm not defending it, but the sort of like everyday, slightly blokey, jokey sexism that you might hear reasonably ordinarily, stuff like women can't drive.

9:47Lewis Goodall:Not defending it, but like it's kind of like sort of out there. That's the sort of thing people say. What I do think is of a slightly different order, though, is what you've described, Emily, which is the stuff that frankly is either creepy or clearly deeply misogynist and corrosive and unpleasant. And clearly as part of that is what was said about Carol Vorderman, in which he didn't say it, but he did defend. And I think it's worth just letting people hear this. It's graphic and it's really unpleasant, but basically he defended someone who had said that they wanted to lick and smell Carol Vorderman's arsehole.

10:23Lewis Goodall:That's the language that was used online. It's grotesque, it's disgusting, and Kenyon comes along and says, look, he's basically saying what we're all thinking. It's like, Rob, no, no one's thinking that. No one is thinking that, and certainly no one would say it. Carol Vorderman herself is obviously, as you might imagine, had something to say about this. Here's a video where she's described this whole experience.

10:43Emma Burnell:An account which Reform have not denied is from him, says about women and how they look. He said that English women don't care and, quote, just walk around with their fat bellies and odd shapes pushing a pram at 16 in their PJs. This is someone Reform wants to be, an MP. He also said on this post, women can't referee, drive or give directions and happily declared I'm sexist. In a rugby league fans forum, the same account, which again, Reformer not denying is from him. They were talking about European women and Rock Kenyon responded to a post saying, wouldn't get me off any of those with a bazooka.

11:36Emma Burnell:Charming. He's a creep. What has Reform said? They said, oh, he's just an ordinary man making ordinary comments. No, he isn't. He's a disgusting little creep and doesn't deserve to be a member of Parliament. And Reform have form in all of this. And I'll put that all in another post. But for now, Rob Kenyon apologised.

12:02Lewis Goodall:I mean, it is just worth saying, just expanding, Vorderman refers to it there. I mean, the reform have come out swinging against all of this and have suggested that it is basically a kind of Westminster, Westminster elite, Westminster media elite witch hunt, stitch up the sort of language that we've heard before. Richard Tice, as you alluded to, Emily, has said on X that this is the Westminster woke or arty criticising the points. Why any lefties, Mr Tice says, fail to realise Makerfield have already voted for a great candidate in their many thousands. Local man, local tradesman, real job, Westminster woke karate, so out of touch.

12:38Emma Burnell:Why this becomes complicated is, you're right, Lewis, you know, most people don't think about their media posts in the same way that, you know, the prime minister or even journalists think about theirs. But it doesn't really matter to some extent what we're saying about this. We are kind of irrelevant in this whole conversation because there is an internecine fight that has already kicked off now between reform and the kind of even more insurgent party, the sort of kid sister that's bitey at their heels, which is restore. And in Makerfield, this is really starting to matter because reform in the latest polls are about three points behind Andy Burnham.

13:23Emma Burnell:I mean, let's not even call it Labour. Let's call it Andy Burnham. They're sitting on about 40 percent of a share of the vote, if that poll is correct. Restore are sitting on 7%, which is enough of a percentage for them actually to do quite a lot of damage to the reform candidates' chances. And, I mean, yes, Carol Vorderman can absolutely pinpoint the creepiness of that language. And you kind of know that no woman who thinks or likes Carol Vorderman would probably ever go near voting for Robert Kenyon. But take this post. This is just a random person with a kind of St. George's flag in their bio that I found on Twitter, who is now comparing Robert Kenyon to Robert Jenrick, who's also in reform and saying, you are now in the same parties as refugees welcome Jenrick.

14:23Emma Burnell:She's quoting Robert Jenrick from many years ago, welcoming Afghan refugees as part of the national project. In other words, her insult is not even about the creepy language. It's not even about the fact he sounds utterly gross. It's about the fact that if it is true he didn't vote for Brexit, then she, this person, is putting him in the same camp essentially as a Remainer or as a partner in reform Robert Jenrick. And so suddenly you've got, you understand the fire that reform is starting to fight on both sides. Of course, they're not going to apologise for him sort of sounding like an absolute eejit compared to women.

15:00Emma Burnell:That's not really reform style. But what do they do about the Brexit thing? Do they kind of have to let that go as well and say, oh, he's just normally, you know, it's absolutely normal. And it is normal. You know, it's fine to have different opinions before you go into politics. As soon as you post them, you are already committing to being public with those views to an open forum in which anyone at any point can take them and hurl them back in your face. And frankly, that's what people on all sides, the political divide are doing to him now.

15:29Lewis Goodall:yeah indeed i mean just on the question of of how um how reform should should deal with this look i think how the voters of makerfield take it is another question and my instinct is is i suspect that burnham won't campaign particularly hard on this stuff i think that he will let it speak for itself and obviously it's up to makerfield to decide and i don't like the kind of idea that you know suddenly we're suggesting that basically every working class man or every working class man with a van just has views like that or endorses or uses language like that. No, they don't. It's certainly true to say that, you know, ordinary people, working class men and women, they don't speak how people in Westminster speak.

16:07Lewis Goodall:It is true that the threshold for saying stuff is much higher. People obviously talk in a much more real way. But some of this stuff that Kenyon has said clearly is way over and above that and is way more extreme than, you know, the average man and woman in Makerfield or anywhere like that. Now, he could then, of course, turn around and sort of apologize for that and say, look, I said this in jest or I said this, you know, without thinking or whatever it happens to be. That is not the reform kind of response. Reform response is basically to say none of it really matters. This is a woke or arty kind of thing, which is a sort of level above.

16:40Lewis Goodall:And I suspect that the reason ultimately that they take that view is because we have learned time and time and time again that there aren't increasingly many barriers on the right or many thresholds on the right that will get you politically speaking or anywhere else cancelled if you like it's certainly true that it would happen on the left you know if we discovered that a green party or lib dem or a labor person said anything like this that would have been it because the elites of the party would reject it and the voters would reject it right but but frankly like you know both are the and it might make a difference in this because it's so tight i'm not saying that it won't matter but but in terms of kind of delegitimizing this guy on the right at elite level or at the kind of core vote level, it's not going to happen.

17:24Lewis Goodall:I mean, I was reading, it just made me think, Emily, how far things have moved. You know, I was reading at the weekend a piece and I totally forgot about this. I don't know if you remember it. It's like 20 years ago. Why should anyone? But, you know, in 2007, we're almost coming up to the 20 year point where David Cameron quite literally deselected one of his parliamentary candidates for simply saying that his constituents had told him that Enoch Powell had been right about immigration. He wasn't even saying it himself. He was saying that his constituents had said it and he was relaying it and he got deselected.

17:56Lewis Goodall:You know, we are a long, long way from that. We are in a different, different political world. So...

18:01Emma Burnell:Well, can I throw in, it's not, I mean, it was around the same time that Cameron stood up in the Commons and said to one of the front benches opposite, calm down, dear. and that was considered so patronising, so horrific, so condescending. And I think to a lot of people it still is. But Jesus, this is a lot further on than calm down, dear. I mean, what has happened to that 20-year period of time where everything has shrunk into something so much more extreme that that seems like an 18th century complaint?

18:36Lewis Goodall:And I think it is worth just focusing a little bit on Restore. if Restore have sort of passed you by and, you know, I mean, why wouldn't they have in lots of ways? I mean, Restore, people will remember, listeners and viewers will remember the kind of schism in reform that we reported on quite a lot of the time between Rupert Lowe, who, of course, was elected as a reform MP in Great Yarmouth. He fell out massively, not unknown in a Nigel Farage story, fell out massively with Farage, has set up his own party, Restore, and quietly, quite extraordinarily really, has in lots of ways been doing quite well, quite quickly.

19:12Lewis Goodall:I mean, again, it's something that will have passed most people by, but weirdo and sallow as I am, something that I was really taken aback by in the local election results was just how well Restore had done in low seat of Great Yarmouth. Like this was a Labour target seat in 2024. It was a Conservative seat before that. It was There's a Labour seat before that. You know, Great Yarmouth, not particularly out there politically in any kind of way. Restore not only did well, they basically swept the board in Great Yarmouth in those elections. They won in every ward they were contesting. Lowe is doing something, and it's not just that either, but in national polls, and as you say, Emily, in the Makerfield polls that we have, they are registering.

19:55Lewis Goodall:They're not doing brilliantly, but the fact that they're getting in some national polls even a few percentage points, seven percentage points in Makerfield, That is clearly really worrying reform. It has been so telling over the course of the weekend. How many accounts, how many reform accounts online, both corporate ones and also, you know, senior party people, including Farage, have been tweeting about Restore. Panicking, clearly, basically going, you vote Restore, you get Labour. You vote Restore, you get Burnham. You get Starmer. It is quite sort of, I mean, there may be Tories, David Cameron from David Cameron down, sort of having a sort of quiet smile to themselves over the course of the weekend to basically watch Farage get Farage.

20:33Lewis Goodall:You know, Farage has been for the last 25, 20, 25 years, you know, biting at the heels of the Conservative Party, constantly forcing them to the right on all sorts of different things as the insurgent, as the populist. As Farage, this is one of the costs of success for Farage, as he has become almost the mainstream force increasingly on the British right. He's now got, you know, basically happening on sort of double speed and double time, potentially an insurgent force to his own right, which is potentially going to affect him much as a way that affected the Tories over the years.

21:06Emma Burnell:Yeah, I think that's right. And I think both party is now fighting for kind of what you loosely call the victimhood status. Right. So Restore UK likes to put itself as, as I said, the sort of the little the little brother, the little sister yapping at the heels because they're the ones getting left behind. They're the ones that are the sort of insurgent to Nigel Farage's, you know, big bossy. I think he called him. What was the phrase that he used about Farage? He basically suggested that he was a bit of a tyrant in his own party. And I mean, not the exact words, but, you know, something along those lines.

21:45Emma Burnell:But what's interesting is that Rob Kenyon, the man in the centre of this row now, is hitting back at Restore's leader, Rupert Lowe, on X. And he said, I used to respect you. Restore have never wanted anything to do with this area. but now someone born with a silver spoon in their mouth is trying to lie about the only working class local man in the race. In other words, he's pointing out the fact that Rupert Lowe, like Nigel Farage, is incredibly wealthy. I think he was two-time owner of Southampton Football Club. He's a businessman. He's got a lot of cash. When you listen to him, he's a sort of posh sounding man.

22:24Emma Burnell:And suddenly you've got this like, you know, we're all fighting for working man status here. And I think, as you said, it's really ugly, actually, to use the idea of working man as being a sort of excuse for whatever you're saying, whatever language you're saying, whatever you think, whatever views you have, because there are plenty of working class people who do not use language like Rob Kenyon. And there are plenty of people who would absolutely abhor the views that he's coming out with now. But it's just so interesting to see the fight back is now I'm more working class than you, Rupert Lowe.

23:00Emma Burnell:And you never cared about this part of the world, which is a working man's part of the world. And you're posh because what? You're from Great Yarmouth. I mean, as I say, I called it inter-Nissan warfare at the start. And if you're Burnham right now and if you're Labour, possibly, I'm sure you're not kind of laughing this out. But you are thinking that this is, for this week at least, making life feel a little bit easier in the run up to the by-election.