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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 Simmons 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.
The same day, he posted another reply to Labour’s “vote for change” messaging:
Is the change nice little sail boats instead of dinghies to get illegals across the channel? Lower carbon footprint too?
@Makerfield_RFK to @UKLabour — 28 June 2024, 07:38 BST
His standalone campaign pitch, tagged #makerfield and #reformuk, was unambiguous:
Labour will fling open the doors even further to mass immigration, don’t let them, you can stop them by voting Reform UK.
@Makerfield_RFK — campaign period, June 2024
Before Southport: The Local Playbook
Though Kenyon lost by 5,000 votes to Labour’s Josh Simons in the July General election, Reform UK’s share of the vote in Makerfield had risen to 32%.
Meanwhile, the connection between immigration rhetoric and local crime — the mechanism that would operate at a national scale during the Southport riots — was already being deployed in Wigan itself in the weeks before the attack.
On the evening of 18 July 2024, Wigan Council posted about a violent incident on Market Street in Wigan town centre. Two men had been arrested. The council described it as an isolated incident, with an increased police presence in place. Kenyon replied to both @WiganCouncil and @GMPWigan simultaneously with two tweets:
Stop voting Labour folks if you want this to stop.
@Makerfield_RFK to @WiganCouncil and @GMPWigan — 18 July 2024
Stop allowing HMOs in Wigan!!!!!
@Makerfield_RFK to @WiganCouncil and @GMPWigan — 18 July 2024
On 20 July, Greater Manchester Police charged a 19-year-old Wigan resident, Esmaeel Mohamed of Avon Road, Norley, with robbery, Section 18 wounding, burglary, possession of a bladed article, and affray. The charges related to a street stabbing on Market Street on 18 July, in which a 19-year-old man received non-life-threatening injuries. Mohamed later pleaded guilty at Bolton Crown Court and was jailed for six years. The police officer who tackled him — Sergeant Carl Beck, who arrived to find Mohamed still armed and used a Taser to bring him down — was subsequently given a national bravery award.
There is nothing in the GMP charging notice, the court record, or any subsequent reporting to suggest Mohamed was an asylum seeker, a hotel resident, or an illegal immigrant. He was a Wigan resident. Kenyon replied to the police charging tweet:
The Conservatives have facilitated this alongside other big companies trying to make money from the illegal immigrant invasion. Labour won’t do anything to stop it or reverse it. Never forget that.
@Makerfield_RFK to @GMPWigan — 20 July 2024
A local teenage stabbing, committed by a Wigan resident who would plead guilty and be jailed, had been publicly reframed as evidence of an “illegal immigrant invasion” — directed at Wigan Police’s own social media account, nine days before Southport.
The HMO thread is equally revealing. Kenyon’s demand — “Stop allowing HMOs in Wigan!!!!!” — connected housing policy directly to crime and, implicitly, to immigration. When Wigan Today reported in October that a former dental surgery was being considered for conversion to a house of multiple occupation, Kenyon replied: “We dont want any more HMOs because we know who will be put in there.”
The implication is consistent across both instances: HMOs mean migrants, migrants mean crime, and the political establishment is facilitating it. This was the playbook Kenyon brought to Southport.
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The Southport Murders
The Southport attack happened at 11:47 BST. Three girls — Bebe King, Elsie Dot Stancombe and Alice Aguiar — were killed at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class. Within hours, disinformation about the attacker’s identity spread across X, falsely naming him as a Muslim asylum seeker. It was that false identity — not the real one — that drove the first riot outside a Southport mosque the same evening.
Kenyon’s first substantive engagement came at 13:02 BST, when he replied to Dan Wootton, the GB News-adjacent commentator, priming his audience for the cover-up narrative before any official information about the attacker had been released.
They’ll keep the perpetrators identity quiet for as long as possible then blame mental health issues. Remember when the little girl got murdered on Mother’s Day in Bolton and they wouldn’t release her name or any photos?
@Makerfield_RFK to @danwootton — 29 July 2024, 13:02 BST
The Bolton reference is a well-established far-right trope, used to imply that Muslim perpetrators are protected by media suppression. By invoking it within 80 minutes of the attack, before the suspect’s identity was known to anyone outside the police, Kenyon was not asking a question. He was seeding an answer.
At 14:25, he retweeted Turning Point UK — the British arm of the American organisation founded by Charlie Kirk — amplifying the claim that police “wouldn’t be stabbing kids” if they hadn’t been “pissing around virtue signalling.” At 14:46 he replied to Keir Starmer’s condolence statement with four exclamation marks: “We have been betrayed!!!!”
At 15:02 he turned to Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, who had issued a statement expressing condolences and confirming she had spoken to the Merseyside Chief Constable. Kenyon’s response:
Secure the borders, deport foreign criminals and free up prison spaces.
@Makerfield_RFK to @YvetteCooperMP — 29 July 2024, 15:02 BST
Six minutes later, he sent a second message to Cooper, ending in six exclamation marks and the words “SORT IT OUT NOW!!!!!! ” He told her she was “not some middle-aged middle manager” and that “since you were appointed, the Country has become a lot more dangerous.”
The attacker’s identity was still unknown. The children were barely an hour dead.
At 16:42, Kenyon amplified Carl Benjamin — the UKIP-era culture war figure who goes by Sargon of Akkad online and who had, a year earlier, been permanently banned from multiple platforms for targeted harassment.
Benjamin’s tweet linked the Southport attack to Pride policing: “The same day 8 children were stabbed, the Merseyside police were celebrating homosexuality. We live in an insane world.” Kenyon endorsed it: “The government and the police have their priorities parallel to the people of this Country.”
At 17:50, Darren Grimes posted a claim — unverified — about migrants shouting “This is for Rishi Sunak” as they crossed the Channel. Kenyon’s reply was a single word:
That is an invasion.
@Makerfield_RFK to @darrengrimes_ — 29 July 2024, 17:50 BST
The language of invasion — not immigration, not crossing, invasion — is the vocabulary of the great replacement theory. Kenyon deployed it on the day three children were murdered, in response to an unverified claim about an unrelated incident.
At 20:18, as the first riot broke out in Southport, Kenyon found a new target: @dapperlaughs, the comedian Daniel O’Reilly, who had a large following. Kenyon’s message was explicit:
Join Reform UK, get involved, we are the only chance we have of saving this Country.
@Makerfield_RFK to @dapperlaughs — 29 July 2024, 20:18 BST
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Spreading the Flames
Across the evening of 29 July and into the following days, Kenyon joined a coordinated effort to pressure police into releasing the suspect’s name. The suspect was 17 years old. Under English law, the names of minor suspects cannot be published without a court order. The police were legally justified in withholding the name.
The false name — Ali Al-Shakati, a Rwandan asylum seeker — was already spreading on X when Kenyon directed his followers to @OliLondonTV, the right-wing influencer, and added:
They can name him if it’s in the public’s interest, like they did with the Bulger killers.
@Makerfield_RFK to @OliLondonTV — 29 July 2024
The Jamie Bulger case — in which two ten-year-old boys murdered a two-year-old in 1993 — is the most emotionally loaded child murder case in modern British history. Invoking it to argue that a 17-year-old suspect’s name should be released, while a false name was already circulating and riots were beginning, was incendiary.
Later that night, at 22:53, he replied to @DylEvans_ — a nationalist account — who was noting that police had amended their statement to confirm the attacker was born in Cardiff. Kenyon: “If they can tell us that, they can tell us more.” The pressure campaign continued past midnight.
When the riots spread nationally from 4 August, Kenyon’s account became a clearing house for far-right amplification. The most significant voice in this space was Elon Musk, who had by this point turned X into a personal political instrument and was using it to intervene directly in British politics.
On 6 August — peak riot day, with mobs attacking mosques in multiple cities — Kenyon retweeted Musk twice. First, at 13:54:
RT @elonmusk: #TwoTierKeir
@Makerfield_RFK — 6 August 2024, 14:14 BST
Then, at 12:53, he had already retweeted Musk’s question “Why aren’t all communities protected in Britain?” — directed at Starmer, implying that mosques were receiving police protection while white communities were not. Kenyon added his own gloss to a separate GB News clip the same evening:
When he says communities does he mean ‘all communities’ or ‘certain communities’
@Makerfield_RFK to @GBNEWS — 6 August 2024, 20:24 BST
Darren Grimes appeared in Kenyon’s timeline four times during the riot period. On 6 August, Kenyon amplified Grimes’s framing of a confrontation in Middlesbrough as “Mobs of Asian men target lone protestors” — then directed the content at @ClevelandPolice: “Have you seen this assault?” He was attempting to weaponise police social media against counter-protesters, using racialised source material.
Carl Benjamin appeared again on 6 August. When Benjamin posted that Starmer was in his “führerbunker”, Kenyon replied with a single tag: “@Sargon_of_Akkad” — a nod of agreement that required no words.
Lee Hurst, the Reform-supporting comedian repeatedly suspended from X, received “Bizarre” as Kenyon endorsed his #TwoTierKeir content. Richard Tice, Reform’s own MP, was retweeted when he drew equivalence between pro-Gaza protesters and the far-right rioters.
When the Home Office issued a statement warning that those engaging in violent protests would face the full force of the law, Kenyon replied to it directly:
Is it a hate crime for Asian men walk round in Birmingham assaulting white people en masse?
@Makerfield_RFK to @ukhomeoffice — 6 August 2024, 11:02 BST
This is not a question. It is a racialised reframing of the riots as anti-white violence.
Riot Apologetics and Conspiracy Theories
Running alongside the amplification was a quieter but equally significant thread: justifying the rioters and delegitimising those who condemned them.
When Steve Rotheram, Mayor of the Liverpool City Region, said he did not understand how people could want to weaponise the deaths of three children before investigations had concluded, Kenyon’s reply to Channel 4 News was: “Who’s weaponising it? Absolute throbber.” He had spent the previous 36 hours doing precisely what Rotheram described.
When Channel 4 News reported that Starmer had condemned “far-right thuggery”, Kenyon replied: “Sorry but when BLM rioted he knelt for them.” The BLM comparison was the single most recycled line in far-right riot discourse during this period — a talking point, not an argument.
When @cez_thomas posted footage of a man being surrounded by a group during the riots and said they would hand the video to the police, Kenyon intervened: “A gang surrounds a bloke, they push him and he hits back. Then they try and play the victim, typical left.”
He was providing narrative cover for a rioter caught on camera, framing the person reporting the incident to police as the aggressor.
On 7 August, with riots still ongoing, Kenyon posted what appeared to be a moment of restraint:
There’s rumours of a protest in Wigan tonight, I would strongly suggest that no supporters of Reform attend this protest. They are being set up by people who are trying to stoke division and cause chaos, don’t play into their hands. Don’t let them divide us.
@Makerfield_RFK — 7 August 2024, 13:32 BST
Read carefully, this is not a condemnation. It does not say the protests are wrong. It says Reform supporters will be used as cover by provocateurs.
The full sweep of accounts Kenyon engaged with during the Southport and riot period maps a coherent far-right information ecosystem: Elon Musk, Dan Wootton, Darren Grimes, Carl Benjamin, Lee Hurst, Richard Tice MP, Rupert Lowe MP, Lee Anderson MP, Turning Point UK, Oli London, and accounts including @BGatesIsaPsycho — whose handle is self-explanatory — and @chewbertie69, a nationalist account amplifying riot footage.
When this reporter posted a thread about the Online Safety Act’s provisions on knowingly spreading false and inflammatory information during the riots, Kenyon replied directly: “You mean like a certain left wing account that said mosques were being targeted and people were being acid attacked?”
Again, no condemnation of the rioters or the violence, but some cryptic reference to Hope Not Hate.
Kenyon did not give up on his theme of migrant violence and the false claims that had led to the worst riots in the UK for a generation. On 29 October, he amplified former GB News presenter Dan Wootton’s claim of a “Southport Massacre cover-up”, adding: “The timing of the release of this makes me wonder.”
On 31 October, he replied to a WiganToday report about plans to convert a dental surgery into housing with multiple occupants:
We dont want any more HMOs because we know who will be put in there.
@Makerfield_RFK to @WigToday — 31 October 2024, 13:39 UTC
By the night of 5 November 2024, as American polls closed, any ambiguity had resolved itself. Kenyon posted:
Lets go Brandon! Vote TRUMP to save America.
@Makerfield_RFK — Tuesday 5 November 2024, 22:45 UTC
Kenyon has since launched a new X account, which bizarrely seems to have been set up in the US.
Byline Times has contacted four spokespeople at Reform UK for comment, but had not received a response by the time of publication.
