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By the time he was announced as Reform UK’s candidate against Labour Mayor Andy Burnham in the Makerfield by-election, the X account of Robert F Kenyon, the “plucky plumber” who is currently Reform UK’s councillor for Bryn with Ashton-in-Makerfield North on Wigan Council, had been mysteriously suspended.
However, an investigation into the archive of Kenyon’s account @Makerfield_RFK, created in January 2024, reveals how the disappearance of his social media posts could be helpful to Nigel Farage’s party.
Kenyon’s 419 archived tweets reveal that he campaigned as Reform UK’s candidate during the 2024 general election almost exclusively on alarmist claims about immigration and invasion.
After he came second to Josh Simons in the general election, Kenyon began highlighting concerns about asylum seeker hostels and spreading false claims about their involvement in local crimes.
By the time of the summer riots a few weeks later, which started after the murder of three children in Southport 20 miles away, Kenyon started seeding cover-up narratives, directing racialised claims at the Home Office, and using the deaths of children as a recruitment pitch.
As the riots spread across England — mobs attacking mosques, burning hotels, clashing with police in a dozen cities — Kenyon had become part of a national disinformation network: amplifying Elon Musk, retweeting far-right influencers like Carl Benjamin and claiming that minority communities get more lenient policing.
Well into the winter of 2024, Kenyon continued to focus on conspiracy theories about the Southport murders and claims of a “two-tier” policing system whilst celebrating the US election victory of Donald Trump.
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Kenyon’s 2024 Election Campaign
Kenyon’s 2024 election campaign for Makerfield was centred largely on promoting panic about immigration, which was applied to every policy area regardless of its actual subject matter. The archive from the campaign period — May through early July 2024 — shows a consistent method: take any official communication, any news story, any political statement, and run it through the immigration filter.
On 27 June, a week before polling day, Yvette Cooper — then still shadow Home Secretary — posted about Labour’s plans for a Border Security Command. Kenyon replied:
What about the ones that slip through Yvette? Will they get to choose their carpets for their new social housing?
@Makerfield_RFK to @YvetteCooperMP — 27 June 2024
The same day, David Lammy posted about Labour’s foreign policy platform — “progressive realism,” reconnecting Britain after fourteen years of Conservative isolation. Kenyon’s reply had nothing to do with foreign policy:
If Labour wins the election say goodbye to your Greenbelt and hello to millions of new migrants to the Country.
@Makerfield_RFK to @DavidLammy — 26 June 2024
Richard Tice, Reform’s own leader, had amplified a claim that Labour’s housing policy would mean putting “illegal migrants in new homes ahead of British citizens.” Kenyon retweeted it. When Angela Rayner said Labour would ensure every borough takes a fair share of migrants, Kenyon amplified Tice’s framing of this as social housing queue-jumping.
On 28 June, Labour posted a campaign graphic: four silhouetted figures standing on a beach at sunset, the image overlaid with the words “Change will only happen if you vote for it.” It was a stock-photo-style aspirational image, the figures in silhouette, looking out to sea. Kenyon replied:
Was this photo taken at Calais?
@Makerfield_RFK to @UKLabour — 28 June 2024, 17:41 BST
There is nothing in the image that references migrants, the Channel, or Calais. The figures are silhouetted against a sunset. The insinuation — that dark silhouetted figures on a beach looking at the sea must be Channel migrants — is the visual grammar of far-right replacement memes.