Reform UK’s candidate for the Makerfield byelection has castigated Brexit as an economically self-harming project promoted by politicians who “peddled the nationalistic pish”, raising more doubts about his commitment to Nigel Farage’s signature achievement.
The comments by Robert Kenyon, unearthed on a defunct rugby league forum and first reported by the Telegraph, follow the emergence of another post 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, a plumber local to the constituency in Greater Manchester, 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.
The comments about Brexit, posted in the hours after the result of the 2016 referendum was called, appear to run counter to his claim that he supported leave at the time.
“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 wrote.
“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’.
“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.”
Asked about the 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.