The Makerfield by-election on 18 June is fast becoming an important acid test for the far-right in the UK, highlighting its dysfunction, its division, and its race-obsessed politics.

The by-election’s main event, the elevation of the Labour heir apparent Andy Burnham to 10 Downing Street, has, in the first days of campaigning, become a sideshow to a far-right circus that has descended on Greater Manchester.

What began as a vetting scandal over Reform UK’s candidate has metastasized into internecine political warfare that, if unchecked, could hobble Reform’s considerable electoral ambitions.

It has become clear that Nigel Farage’s anti-immigrant party had high hopes of challenging Burnham in the once safe Labour seat, but picked the wrong candidate because Reform’s vetting is not fit for purpose.

Kenyon is emblematic of a swathe of dire Reform electoral candidates with dubious pasts and affiliations, who are unworthy of electoral office.

Robert Kenyon, on paper, must have seemed like a good fit as the Makerfield candidate to Reform’s leadership.

Ticked boxes

A local councilor in Wigan, he came in a respectable second when he stood in the Makersfield constituency in the 2024 general election, and his backstory of a local plumber and an ex-army reservist ticked some right-wing populist boxes.

But Kenyon’s positives quickly started to implode under the inevitable media glare of the high-profile by-election.

His campaign started to unravel whenSearchlight revealed that he had been scrubing clean his online hostory.

In particular, shortly before being selected a sthe reform candidate, he had ‘mothballed’ his Facebook page – a page where he had been Facebook friends with Gary Raikes, leader of the avowedly fascist New British Union, the present-day incarnation of Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists.

Fascist activists

Another ‘friend’ Kenyon had accepted, we revealed, was Alex Eversfield, a former BNP member who has more recently attached himself to Alek Yerbury’s political projects: first the short-lived National Support Detachment then its successor the National Rebirth Party.

And then there was ‘Britain MyNation’, aka Robert Baggs, a British National Party veteran, who is a fully-paid-up and leading member of the Homeland Party, Kenny Smith’s breakaway from the neo-nazi Patriotic Alternative, and regularly writes articles for the party website.

Shocking details

A slew of other dodgy social media revelations condemning Kenyon followed.

Hope Not Hate revealed that in 2021 Kenyon interacted with a sleazy social media message sent to the former Countdown host, Carol Vorderman which read: “Happy birthday Carol, my God I would love to smell and lick your ********.”

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

Vorderman has demanded an apology.

The i paper unearthed 2019 comments sent on a rugby league forum which claimed women who have abortions get them for “vanity purposes,” and so they can “shag anyone they want”.

Hope Not Hate also found that Kenyon called abortion a “cowardly act of murdering a defenceless baby”in a series of now-deleted tweets from one account.

More offensive comments were revealed as reporters trawled old social media accounts, including attacks on the LGBTQ+ community, COVID-19 anti-vax opinions and pro-Putin sympathies.

Most bizarrely, The Times reported that Kenyon may not have voted for Brexit, even though that is a core policy of Reform.

In a social media post dating from March 28, 2019, he claimed he was not the typical right-winger.

“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,” he said.

Reform was forced to defend Kenyon by resorting to false narratives and gaslighting.

When Reform was asked for a response to the allegation that Kenyon had been Facebook friends with Gary Raikes, Reform initially said there were no “screenshots to evidence your claim” and asked: “Do you have any?” The party was then supplied with an unredacted screenshot confirming the friendship.

Brilliant candidate

As a result, Reform issued a statement defending Kenyon: “A Facebook friend does not constitute an endorsement of his views. Robert Kenyon is a brilliant candidate, and we are proud to have him represent the party. British politics needs more real people involved like Robert”.

Announcing Kenyon as the candidate, Farage said: “When he [Kenyon] campaigned here at the general election, hundreds of people joined as friends, and one of them turned out to be unsavoury. I am utterly confident that in Rob, we’ve got somebody who’s done his bit for his country, done his bit for himself, does his bit for the community”.

This glossed over the fact that people cannot simply sign on as your Facebook friends; you have to accept them as such. Which is what Kenyon had done in relation to the three fascists we identified.

Vetting in chaos

Clearly, Reform’s candidate vetting and selection is in chaos, and Kenyon is just the latest example of it whitewashing candidates who fellow-travel with fascists and racists.

Indeed, in 2024, a  story in The Times revealed that 41 Reform candidates in the General Election were Facebook friends with the fascist Raikes. Farage made his excuses to Good Morning Britain: “Look, most of our candidates are not political sophisticates. Alright?”

In the midst of the Kenyon’s social media debacle, Reform made some noise about improving its vetting by saying it wanted to recruit a vetting officer, but it was too little too late.

Restore ruins the party

A bigger problem for Nigel Farage had barged its way into Makerfield in the shape of Restore Britain, the party that aims to outflank Reform on the right with a nightmarish vision of the mass deportation of immigrants, led by Farage’s nemesis, Rupert Lowe.

Restore, which has undergone extensive infiltration by fascists, Holocaust deniers and ethno-nationalists, is standing a candidate in Markfield that threatens to split the far-right vote.

Restore activists, including shady characters from the darkest corners of British fascism, are campaigning hard in the constituency, and a battle cry is “get Farage”, egged on by the world’s richest man, Elon Musk.

Infighting in Reform

Indeed, Restore canvassers have been told if they come across Labour voters, just move on; they are targeting Reform supporters.

Infighting has also erupted in the ranks of Reform UK, between the blow-ins from the Tory party and the anti-immigrant purists, in a race to the bottom with Restore to conjure up policies that would lead to mass expulsions of people from whom the UK is home.

Party chairman Zia Yusuf publicly disagreed with his Reform colleague Robert Jenrick over the details of the party’s deportation policy.

Treasury spokesman Jenrick had said foreign nationals would not be removed just because they live in social housing, but also if they were not working or earning enough.

But Yusuf, the home affairs spokesman, said Jenrick’s answer was “not Reform policy” and the party would look to remove foreign nationals living in social housing “at taxpayer expense” from the UK.

The end-game

The Makerfield by-election, which once might have offered Reform UK an important electoral victory, is now becoming a point of jeopardy for its brand of anti-immigrant politics and exposing the party’s mismanagement.

Homeland Party-adjacent, far-right policy-wonk Pete North warned in his newsletter:  “Reform is struggling to find passable candidates (which) points to more serious problems in Farage’s organisation.

“At this point, Reform needs to win every by-election.

“If Reform does lose, they’ll blame Restore for splitting the vote, but the bottom line is that they failed to find a high-profile quality candidate who could beat Andy Burnham – and that’s on them alone”.