Category Archives: Makerfield

Top Tory Humiliated With Brutal Makerfield Poll Putting Conservatives In Last Place

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A senior Conservative was left red-faced on Sunday when presented with the results of an opinion poll of the Makerfield voters.

Sky News presenter Trevor Phillips showed shadow home secretary Chris Philp the findings from a Survation survey of 369 people set to vote in the crunch by-election.

The graph showed put the Conservatives in last place on 2% in the constituency.

The Green Party were just in front on 3%, the Liberal Democrats on 4%, Restore Britain on 7%, Reform UK on 40% and Labour in the lead on 43%.

Phillips said: “Before 2024, you used to come second between 20 and 30% of the vote.

“Now there are three parties that could describe themselves as being of the right, or centre right, and you – you’re the official opposition – you’re the least popular of the three!

“Reform, Restore, Conservatives.”

Pointing to the graph, he said: “Look, there are the Tories, down there at the bottom. What the heck happened?”

Sky News' graph of the Survation opinion poll
Sky News’ graph of the Survation opinion poll

The Tory MP replied: “By-elections are very strange things. You’ve got this weird dynamic where Andy Burnham is running as a Labour candidate to basically kick out Keir Starmer.

“So this by-election is idiosyncratic, it’s incredibly unusual.”

Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham is hoping to win the Makerfield seat so he can challenge the prime minister’s leadership.

Phillips said: “But people of the right aren’t going to you. They’re going to Reform, they’re going to Restore, which is a party almost nobody has even heard of.

“They are polling better than you are! What has happened to the Tories?”

“Let’s just see what the actual result says,” Philp replied, claiming this was “just one little poll in one constituency in very unusual circumstances”.

He said: “If you take the [national] polls as a whole, we’re often in second place, Kemi is rated as the best leader and you can see that we’re the only party holding the failing Labour Party to account.”

Philp also noted that it takes time to “rebuild trust” with the public following their unpopular 14-year stint in government.

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Exclusive: Reform’s Makerfield Candidate Praises Last Labour Government In Unearthed Comments

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Reform UK’s Makerfield candidate previously praised the last Labour government in unearthed comments seen by HuffPost UK.

Robert Kenyon is standing against Labour candidate and Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham in the crunch Makerfield by-election.

Kenyon was once pretty positive about Labour’s changes in office – which former minister Burnham had been a part of.

He claimed “god knows where I would have ended up” without the government’s apprenticeship initiatives.

In posts dating back to 2013 on a since-deleted forum for rugby fans, he wrote: “If it weren’t for the last Labour Government god knows where I would have ended up, without their Asset Training Scheme I wouldn’t have been able to complete my apprenticeship which was funded by the Government at the cost of £50 a week payed [sic] to me which they invested well and now I don’t need to rely on them.

“Like I said, the benefits system needs overhauling massively to rid the idle from the taxpayers hard earned but first the opportunity to get into work and training must be implemented but somehow I can’t see the Tories doing that.”

A Reform UK spokesperson told HuffPost UK: “Rob represents the tens of thousands of formerly loyal Labour voters in Makerfield that the party has since abandoned. Labour has completely betrayed its traditional working-class northern base who are now backing Reform UK in their droves.”

A Labour Party spokesperson said: “It’s good to hear that Robert Kenyon is proud of the work of the last Labour government. So are we.

“From lifting hundreds of thousands of kids out of poverty, to introducing the minimum wage, Labour is building on that proud legacy today.

“While Reform focus on spreading toxic division and Robert Kenyon is mired in scandal, Labour’s Andy Burnham is focused on delivering on local people’s priorities and bringing communities together.”

Kenyon has attracted plenty of scrutiny after his internet presence has been unearthed in the days since he was announced as Reform’s Makerfield candidate.

He said women can’t “ref, drive or give directions” on an online rugby fan forum in the 2010s, and claimed women presenting rugby games on TV “aren’t up to the job and only there to tick a box”, adding: “I’m sexist, sorry but I am.”

He also claimed women get abortions for “vanity purposes” so they can “shag anyone they want” and described gay people as “poofs” who “mince about” on TV.

The Wigan councillor also once cast doubt on the Covid vaccine on his now-deleted X account, saying: “It’s not making people sicker, I’ve no booster and had covid last week asymptomatic.”

He suggested he did not vote for Brexit too, writing on social media in 2019: “So anyone who thinks I love Trump, voted Brexit, read the Daily Mail, live in the 1950s, a Tory and 103 is wrong. I’m none of the above.”

In another forum post from 2014, he said: “Russia are well within their rights to do what they have done as we did with the Falklands.”

Anti-fascist group Hope Not Hate also revealed that in 2021 Kenyon interacted with a social media message sent to the Countdown host, which read: “Happy birthday Carol, my God I would love to smell and lick your arsehole.”

Kenyon replied, “he’s only saying what we’re all thinking,” along with a thumbs up and a laughing emoji.

In response to the backlash about Vorderman, Kenyon told Manchester Evening News: “I’m not a polished politician.

“I am rough around the edges. I have made mistakes in my life. I’m not perfect. Nobody is. Not a single person in the world is perfect.

“I think everybody does say things that eventually they regret.”

Touching on the Vorderman backlash, Kenyon said: “It was a crude attempt at a joke to probably about 50 followers.

“No offence was meant, and it’s not something I’d do now.”

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Reform Dismisses Sexism Row Around Makerfield Candidate As ‘Locker Room Banter’

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Reform UK has dismissed the sexism row around its Makerfield candidate as “locker room banter”.

Wigan councillor Robert Kenyon is standing against Labour’s Greater Manchester Andy Burnham, who is hoping to oust Keir Starmer as prime minister if he wins this by-election.

Kenyon has been repeatedly accused of misogynism in recent days after multiple outlets unearthed his controversial online comments.

An account linked to Kenyon wrote women can’t “ref, drive or give directions” on an online rugby fan forum in the 2010s, adding: “I’m sexist, sorry but I am.”

The same account also made disparaging remarks about women’s appearances.

A Reform spokesperson told the Independent: “These comments, which are little more than locker room banter, were made more than a decade ago – well before Rob was in politics.”

That response only worsened the backlash on social media.

Labour MP Luke Charters replied on X: ”‘Locker-room banter’ is a pathetic excuse for blatant misogyny from a grown man.

“Reform could have called out the overt sexism and condemned it. Instead, they framed it as an ‘establishment hit job’.

“Tells you everything you need to know about them,” he added, along with a dinosaur emoji.

Many other social media accounts hit out at Reform for dismissing misogyny as “banter” – and for using the American term for changing rooms.

When approached about the backlash, Reform’s spokesperson said: “We simply don’t care about establishment hit jobs. We fully back Rob and are confident he will be an excellent MP for Makerfield.”

It comes after campaign group Hope Not Hate published a series of messages it says were sent from Kenyon’s X account last week, which include sexual and sexist language, particularly around presenter Carol Vorderman.

The former Countdown host described Kenyon as a “cowardly misogynist” over the comments and has demanded an apology.

Reform MP Danny Kruger defended those remarks on the Today programme, telling the BBC: “What you’re seeing there is obviously a private comment.

“The great challenge for social media for private people is that they use it as if they are chatting to their friends in the pub.

“It was a clearly inappropriate thing to say. I’m not going to judge people for what was intended as private conversations. Clearly that is not the kind of comment you would want an elected politician to say.”

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Green Candidate In Makerfield By-Election Quits After Less Than 12 Hours

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The Greens’ candidate for the Makerfield by-election has quit after less than 12 hours in the role.

The party said Chris Kennedy, a nurse and children’s safeguarding specialist, stood down for “personal and family reasons”.

He was announced as the candidate at around 7.30am on Thursday but had stood down by approximately 4.30pm.

The Greens are now looking for nominations for new candidates before the by-election on June 18.

Shortly after the news broke, The Times reported Kennedy had shared social media posts describing an attack on Jewish ambulances in north London as a “false flag” operation.

An Instagram video described the attack as “total bullshit to keep the false flag flying” and included an image where parts of the word “Jewish” had been blacked out.

Kennedy also shared a post from Hugh Anthony, who describes himself as a “proud ethno-nationalist”, which claimed the Golders Green terror attack made “no sense”.

A Green Party spokesperson told The Times that Kennedy “apologises for the offence caused” and had deleted the posts.

A party representative told the BBC the posts “don’t reflect the views of The Green Party”.

When announcing Kennedy’s decision to stand down, a Green spokesperson said: “We wish Chris the best and understand that family has to come first.

“As a party, we are re-opening nominations now because we believe people in Makerfield deserve a real choice at this by-election, and the Green Party will be standing to offer exactly that.

“Across the country, more and more voters are turning away from the old parties and looking for politicians who will genuinely stand up for their communities.

“We will also be redoubling our efforts on campaigning to expose the risk of Reform, a party who seeks to divide our communities.

“This election has to be about how to make the super-rich pay their fair share, how we tackle the cost-of-living crisis with lower bills and affordable housing, and how we protect our public services and our green spaces.

“It has to be about offering Makerfield hope over hate.”

Subscribe to Commons People, the podcast that makes politics easy. Every week, Kevin Schofield and Kate Nicholson unpack the week’s biggest stories to keep you informed. Join us for straightforward analysis of what’s going on at Westminster.

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