Reform Smelled Blood In Makerfield - Now It’s Their Own

As Reform's Makerfield candidate cracks up further, Labour and the Greens seem intent on self sabotage. Right, so Reform UK walked into Makerfield looking for blood, and the first body on the floor turned out to be their own candidate. Makerfield is a working-class seat just outside Wigan, in Greater Manchester, an old Labour heartland Reform has spent two years desperate to crack open to prove it can finish Labour off in the north. So they went and picked a local man, Robert Kenyon, a 41-year-old plumber and Wigan councillor, born in the area, exactly the "one of us" pitch Reform loves to run. And within days of his selection his old internet posts came crawling back to bury the campaign. On a rugby league forum he'd written, in his own words, "I'm sexist, sorry but I am," that women "can't referee, drive or give directions." There were posts sneering at women who have abortions, posts about women's bodies, and degrading comments about Carol Vorderman, who turned round and called him a misogynist and an online abuser, in public, by name. The material reported in the press was sexist and homophobic, and Reform still chose to defend him as a straight-talking local candidate. And Reform's answer to all of it? Their MP Danny Kruger went on the radio and called them the "private" comments of "an ordinary man," while a party spokesman waved the whole pile away as "locker room banter" from over a decade ago and sniffed that they "simply don't care about establishment hit jobs." Well how about this instead then Danny – is this a hit job, or just a man woefully out of his depth?