Reform investigates whether Makerfield candidate’s sexist posts were costly

Nigel Farage with his party’s candidate, Robert Kenyon. Farage called Andy Burnham’s win ‘emphatic’. Photograph: Adam Vaughan/EPA View image in fullscreen Nigel Farage with his party’s candidate, Robert Kenyon. Farage called Andy Burnham’s win ‘emphatic’. Photograph: Adam Vaughan/EPA Reform investigates whether Makerfield candidate’s sexist posts were costly Nigel Farage admits result was ‘disappointing’ after party hoped for tightly fought battle with Burnham UK politics – live updates Andy Burnham wins by huge majority Reform UK is examining whether sexist comments by its candidate in the Makerfield byelection might have harmed the party’s chances, after Nigel Farage accepted the result had disappointed him. The party’s examination of its defeat comes after Andy Burnham won 55% of the vote share in a poll which Reform hoped would be a tightly fought battle between the Labour leadership hopeful and its own candidate, the local plumber Robert Kenyon. Canvassers from different parties reported that voters highlighted sexist and lewd social media posts by Kenyon, which emerged during the campaign, with women in particular saying they were put off by them. After Kenyon came more than 9,000 votes behind Burnham in Thursday’s vote , one Reform activist said the party had advised the candidate not to apologise for the comments. “That’s something that was not his fault, it was how he was advised,” they said. The issue rose to prominence when the TV presenter Carol Vorderman used a video posted online to demand an apology from Kenyon, after it emerged he had joined in a graphic discussion about her, in since-deleted posts. “I will admit that the Vorderman stuff did not help us,” another Reform source said. Farage’s party has pointed to the scale of the task it faced taking on as well-known a figure as Burnham, even in a seat demographically more favourable to Reform than Labour, saying Kenyon performed well to increase his share of the vote from 2024, even by just 2.7 percentage points. The party was also slightly buoyed by Rupert Lowe’s far-right Restore UK taking just under 7% of the vote, less than some forecasts had predicted. In a video message posted on X on Friday morning, Farage urged people who voted for Restore to back Reform instead, saying it was the only viable contender on the right of UK politics. The result had been “a dramatic, emphatic win for Andy Burnham”, Farage said in the message. Chart showing votes on left and right Reform had hoped to win at least 18,000 votes, against the 15,696 it achieved, Farage said, arguing that his party had been “slightly hoist with our own petard” in taking on a Labour challenger whose implicit message had been that a vote for him was a vote to remove Keir Starmer, which was Reform’s slogan in May’s local election. Burnham’s personal standing in Greater Manchester , where he has been mayor since 2017, appeared to be more of a factor, as well as the comments by Kenyon, who did not apologise but sought to