Reform UK’s Makerfield byelection candidate appeared to doubt seriousness of Covid on X

Exclusive: Robert Kenyon has been linked to vaccine scepticism and advised a person with the virus to ‘stop having boosters’

The Reform UK candidate in this month’s Makerfield byelection appeared to express doubt over the seriousness of Covid and the efficacy of vaccines for the virus in another tranche of messages unearthed from now-deleted social media posts.

Previously seen messages from Robert Kenyon showed him interacting with far-right figures and expressing strong support for Donald Trump. Separately, the broadcaster Carol Vorderman has asked Kenyon to apologise for “disgusting comments” he made about her on X in the past.

Kenyon, a plumber who stood for Nigel Farage’s party in Makerfield during the 2024 general election and is going up against Andy Burnham in the byelection on 18 June, was a prolific poster on X, using an account that has since been deleted.

Archived webpages show a series of posts connected to Covid, including one in July 2022 in response to a post about a new variant. “It’s not making people sicker, I’ve no booster and had covid last week asymptomatic,” he wrote.

When challenged as to why he was expressing such views based on just his own experiences, Kenyon replied: “At the same time I had it, four other people on the course I was on caught it all the same as me, no symptoms.”

He said his 70-something mother-in-law had experienced it “as a cold” despite having chronic lung disease.

The next day, replying on X to someone who said they were ill with Covid, Kenyon said: “Wait longer, take vitamins, stop having boosters.”

In February 2023, Kenyon quote-tweeted a Sky News post about Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer for England, urging people to get Covid booster vaccines, saying Whitty “can fuck right off”.

Kenyon also posted about Covid on a now defunct rugby league forum. The messages included one from January 2022 arguing that news of a variant that may affect children more could be a way “to scare parents into getting their kids jabbed”, adding: “I smell a rat.”

Vaccine scepticism or conspiracies are not unknown in Reform. At the party’s last annual conference, Aseem Malhotra, a controversial doctor who has been an adviser to Trump’s health secretary, Robert F Kennedy, argued that Covid vaccines “created havoc” in the body and were linked to incidents of cancer in the royal family.

Sharon Hodgson, a junior health minister, said: “Over 200,000 people died from Covid across Britain. How anyone seeking public office can have sought to have minimised the risk posed by the pandemic and undermined confidence in vaccines is beyond the pale.

“For Reform’s candidate in Makerfield to have actively encouraged people not to take potentially life-saving booster vaccines exposes just how unfit for office he is.”

A Reform UK spokesperson said: “Robert had all his Covid jabs during the pandemic and his children are fully up to date on every vaccination.

“These comments were made long before Rob was in politics. He isn’t a polished, professional politician and doesn’t speak like one. That’s precisely why he’ll be a straight-talking, effective voice for normal working people in Makerfield.”