Nigel Farage suggests Reform should be “unapologetic” about Robert Kenyon’s offensive social media posts
He claimed that Kenyon’s remarks are “the kind of comments you’ll hear in every pub in the country every evening”
Nigel Farage has not only refused to apologise for Robert Kenyon’s history of making offensive comments online, but has endorsed them.
At a Reform press conference yesterday, Farage was quizzed on Kenyon’s comments online and asked if he thinks Reform’s Makerfield by-election campaign could have gone better than it has so far.
Investigations into Kenyon’s social media activity have found that he made misogynistic comments about women, including agreeing with a comment another social media user made about wanting “smell & lick” Carol Vorderman’s “arsehole”.
In comments from 2022, Kenyon also said that women have abortions for “vanity purposes” and so they can “shag anyone they want”.
He has also shared posts by far-right influencers such as Karl Benjamin and Peter Sweden, who has a history of Holocaust denial.
In 2024, Searchlight also revealed that Kenyon was one of 41 Reform candidates who was Facebook friends with Gary Raikes, leader of the New British Union, a neo-fascist organisation.
A week out from the Makerfield by-election, Farage told a journalist that the comments were posted a decade ago and claimed they had “been taken wildly out of context”.
The Reform leader then went on to say “they’re the sort of comments you won’t necessarily get if you’re an Oxford-educated career politician living in a nice postcode in London”.
He added: “But I tell you what they’re the kind of comments you’ll hear in every pub in the country every evening.”
Farage went as far as to say “We should be unapologetic that Rob is an ordinary bloke, who’s carved out quite a career for himself, had the guts to set up a business, served as an army reservist, is a patriot, likes his rugby, likes the odd pint and said a few laddish things on social media 10 years ago”.
“Do you know what I’d say to that? I’d say, so what?,” Farage concluded.
Online, Suella Braverman’s husband Rael called Farage’s response “brilliant”.
Reform Party UK Exposed challenged the Reform leader’s response, stating on X: “Nigel Farage thinks calling women sluts, saying they can’t drive, saying they don’t deserve equal pension rights and making disgusting comments about them online is “laddish behaviour”.
“Reform UK has a misogyny problem, and it goes to the top.”
Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward
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