Carol Vorderman has demanded an apology from Reform UK candidate Robert Kenyon over past social media comments she says amounted to abuse, putting the party’s Makerfield byelection pick under fresh pressure. The broadcaster, 65, said Kenyon should apologise to her and to other people he had targeted online.
The dispute has moved to the centre of the Makerfield by election because Reform has backed Kenyon to face Andy Burnham in next month’s vote. Vorderman described him as a misogynist in a video posted last week and called him a cowardly man, after a 2021 post in which Kenyon replied to a social media message about her by writing: “He’s only saying what we’re all thinking”.
Vorderman said the comments were not a private matter and should be treated as public abuse on a public platform. She said being an “ordinary man” was no excuse, and warned that if Reform accepted that behaviour then women in Makerfield needed to know what kind of politics the party was backing in the election. Her demand was blunt: an apology from Kenyon, to her and to everyone else he had abused online.
The row sharpened after Danny Kruger defended Kenyon on Radio 4 on Monday, saying the remarks were “inappropriate” but adding that he was “not going to judge people for what are essentially regarded at the time and intended as private conversations”. Kruger also said Kenyon “was not a politician at the time, he was an ordinary man from an ordinary place, and what he’s done now is step forward, outraged at the state of our country and the state of his community.”
That defence did not sit well with Vorderman, who said the posts were public comments on a public platform and should be seen as online abuse. Angela Rayner also criticised them, telling the Mirror that “it says all you need to know about Reform that they are allowing this repulsive misogynistic abuse to stand.”
More posts later emerged from other sites, including a rugby league forum from 2019. In those posts, Kenyon said women who have abortions do so for “vanity purposes” and so they can “shag anyone they want”. An investigation by the Independent also found that he wrote women can’t “ref, drive or give directions” and that women presenting rugby games on TV “aren’t up to the job and only there to tick a box”.
Kenyon has not denied the tone of the comments. In one post, he declared: “I’m sexist, sorry but I am.” Reform’s response has been to say the remarks were made before Cllr Kenyon entered politics and that he is entitled to his own personal opinions on abortion. The question now is whether the party keeps him as its candidate after the later posts, and after a campaign that has already turned a local byelection into a test of how far Reform will go to defend him.
