Reform UK’s Robert Kenyon opens up on preventing Labour’s machine, his rugby roots, and why he believes the heartland seat is able to reject Sir Keir Starmer
Robert Kenyon tells David Williamson about his journey from Rugby League to standing for Parliament (Picture: Tim Merry / Humphrey Nemar)
Robert Kenyon is used to tackling crises for the folks of Makerfield. As a plumber, he arrives in properties throughout the constituency to repair leaks and blockages. Now he desires the prospect to become familiar with an excellent larger vary of issues as Reform UK’s latest Member of Parliament.
The June 18 by-election is like none in latest historical past. It was triggered when the sitting Labour MP stop to provide Mayor of Better Manchester Andy Burnham the chance to return to Parliament and exchange Sir Keir Starmer as Prime Minister. The eyes of the world are on Makerfield. If Mr Burnham triumphs, the White Home, NATO, the bond markets, the EU, Moscow and Beijing will put together for a brand new battle for Quantity No 10.
But when Mr Kenyon, a 41-year-old dad of two, can cease Mr Burnham in his tracks, Labour might be humiliated and devastated on the lack of a heartland seat which has at all times been painted purple. Victory right here would cement expectations that Nigel Farage might be Prime Minister after the subsequent normal election. For the person Reform has dubbed the “plucky plumber”, that is unfinished enterprise. He fought the seat within the 2024 contest and completed second, simply 5,399 votes behind Labour in a landslide election 12 months.
His newest marketing campaign has been rocked by a number of revelations about previous feedback posted on social media, a few of which have raised sharp questions on his angle to girls. As reported within the Specific, he acknowledges he has made “crass” remarks which he “would remorse now and would not say now”.
In standing in opposition to Mr Burnham, this former Military reservist who additionally labored as an NHS specialist technician faces probably the most skilled politicians in Britain – an ex-cabinet minister who twice ran for the Labour management and has constructed a robust private model by the Manchester mayoralty. However, once we meet on a scorching day at Reform’s Wigan HQ, Mr Kenyon doesn’t look frightened about taking up the Labour hi-tech campaigning machine.
“Wigan’s completely different gravy,” he explains. “They suppose they know Wigan; they do not know it like I do know it. I do know Makerfield as a result of we have truly spoken to folks on the doorstep. I stay it, I breathe it.”
Pointing to his years working as a plumber, he says: “I have been working in six folks’s homes a day, at the least… I do know folks spherical right here.
“I do not want a spreadsheet that claims how somebody voted 15 years in the past. I do know what’s in folks’s hearts and of their minds.”
He has a prepared assault line, contrasting his ambition to champion the constituency with Mr Burnham’s extensively acknowledged aspirations to rescue the Labour social gathering and transfer into Quantity 10: “My precedence is Makerfield, not going onto one other job.”
Get the newest politics information – straight from our staff in Westminster and extra Subscribe Invalid electronic mail
We use your sign-up to offer content material in methods you’ve got consented to and to enhance our understanding of you. This will embrace adverts from us and third events primarily based on our understanding. You’ll be able to unsubscribe at any time. Learn our Privateness Coverage
Robert Kenyon says he has been a fan of Nigel Farage since UKIP days (Picture: Sean Hansford | Manchester Night Information)
Constituents don’t need to be dragged into Labour’s “civil conflict”, he argues: “They’re sick of it. They need to be listened to; they need us to behave on their behalf.”
He doesn’t hesitate when requested if voters in Makerfield really feel they’ve shared in Manchester’s prosperity on Mr Burnham’s watch: “Completely not. We’ve been ignored.”
The truth is, he argues: “They do not see themselves as being from Better Manchester. When you met anybody from Wigan on vacation, [not] one in all them would say [they came from] Better Manchester. They’d say Wigan or Lancashire.
“That’s our identification that goes again tons of and tons of of years.”
If Labour is ousted from Makerfield, he claims, this might be an instance of “democracy in motion” which “simply reveals which you can’t take folks as a right”.
He describes how belief in Labour has collapsed because of unpopular insurance policies comparable to adjustments to pensioners winter gas funds and a refusal to ship for WASPI girls. Mr Kenyon’s personal political journey displays the withering of assist for Labour in former industrial communities throughout the nation.
“I used to be introduced as much as go and put your X within the Labour field as a result of that is what you probably did spherical right here,” he says. “However then I received to a sure age the place I assumed, ‘Cling on a minute, we have been to Iraq and we have been to Afghanistan. We’ve bought all of the gold off at document low costs, and the inhabitants’s grown by x million…’ That’s what put me off the Labour social gathering as a result of I did not suppose they have been for the working man or working girl anymore. So then I began voting UKIP as a result of I used to be an enormous fan of Nigel, nonetheless am.”
The lightning bolt hit him round 2010, when he heard the longer term Reform chief on the radio: “I listened to him for about half an hour [and] I used to be blown away. I assumed, ‘Who is that this man? You realize, he talks quite a lot of sense.”
Robert Kenyon addresses previous social media posts
Immediately, he’s pinning his hopes on the potential for Reform to ship a “higher and safer nation”. As a reservist, he educated to offer engineering assist to infantry, constructing bridges and eradicating obstacles.
He “completely liked” his time within the Military, and says ministers ought to search the recommendation of the folks accountable for operating our armed forces: “Discover out what they need and do your greatest to provide it to them, whether or not it is folks, gear, cash, as a result of on the finish of the day, you have to defend your nation and have that deterrent.”
Initially of the 12 months there have been fewer than 74,000 folks within the UK’s common Military, however Mr Kenyon insists “the standard is there and the folks of this nation are the most effective preventing women and men on the planet”.
His coaching – which has additionally included taking evening courses in building and mechanical engineering – has left him, he says, with a “mindset of wanting to sort things”. He has additionally been formed by his time working as a medical gasoline specialist within the NHS.
“One minute you might be working subsequent to an finish of life affected person making an attempt to repair one thing that is going to make the previous couple of minutes, hours [a] bit simpler, after which the subsequent minute you might be working in neonatal subsequent to a 26-week-old child that would slot in the palm of your hand,” he remembers.
He admits this could possibly be an “emotional curler coaster since you’d see folks at varied components of the life with varied accidents, and it makes you are feeling fortunate, you recognize, that you just’re right here”.
Robert Kenyon is in a by-election which might form Britain’s future (Picture: Tim Merry)
One other defining affect on the aspiring MP is rugby league. This Wigan Warriors fan began turning out to play in matches on the age of seven, and has vivid recollections of the frozen puddles on the pitches.
“You realize, whenever you’re seven years of age in shorts and t-shirt and also you’re enjoying in opposition to different folks, it definitely toughens you up… I’d say my angle was most likely cast on the rugby pitch, since you’ve received a gaggle of mates round you [who] are prepared to undergo hell.”
Friendships from his years of rugby-playing stay on the coronary heart of his life. Makerfield’s heritage of rugby league, coal mines and mills, he says, “creates that sense of group and toughness”.
“If we do not like one thing, we’ll say it, and that’s why folks have been rejecting Labour lately on this space,” he continues. “It doesn’t matter what they are saying [or] the guarantees they make, folks in Wigan do not endure fools.”
Leave a Reply