“It’s like driving on the surface of Mars, the potholes are so bad”

Like many Wigan MPs, Rober Kenyon grew up in a staunch Labor family, but when Reform UK candidate Makerfield grew old enough to think for himself, his own loyalty to the party now led by Sir Keir Starmer is gone. Even so, having grown up in a town where the coal mining industry was controversially decimated by the Tory government of the 1980s, hitching his wagon to the Tories was “unthinkable”.

“When you’re from Wigan, because of what happened in the 80s when they closed the coal mines, I could never vote Conservative,” said the British Army reservist Lance Corporal and plumber. “I actually don’t think the Tories will ever win a parliamentary seat in Wigan because of this.”

However, Wigan Warriors fan Mr Kenyon says he joined Reform UK because he felt “politically homeless”. Because of his part-time military background, Kenyon refuses to discuss reform leader Nigel Farage’s controversial view that the West provoked Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine through the eastward expansion of the European Union and NATO.

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“I’m not allowed to express an opinion about such things,” he said. Elsewhere, he said: “I looked around and thought about who I would like to vote for and, like a lot of people, I felt that the other parties had let people down. We felt we needed a clean slate.

“Yes, I was raised in a working-class household. My dad was Labour, but I started thinking ‘wait a minute’. I started to think for myself.

“I thought about the Iraq War and how Labor sold off the gold reserves and the mass immigration we didn’t ask for or vote for.” But the father-of-one rejects any suggestion that opposition to so-called “mass immigration” could indicate that Reform UK is a racist party.

“What appeals to me about them is that they have made sure that anyone with an extremist or racist ideology cannot be in the party,” he continued. “They are very good at keeping out the racist elements.”

He says the issues knocking on Makerfield’s doorstep ahead of the July 4 general election are an overstretched NHS, the cost of living crisis, immigration and crime.

“I’m tired of smelling weed when I drive,” he said. “All you have to do is walk down Ashton-in-Makerfield and smell the people smoking it in their cars. Except that wasn’t the case five years ago.

Mr Kenyon, a specialist in the martial art of Muay Thai, is also furious about the pits around the Makerfield constituency. “Sometimes it’s like driving on the surface of Mars,” he said. “I’m sure some of Neil Armstrong’s footprints are on our street.”

Meanwhile, Mr Kenyon has a clear answer to the idea that a vote for Reform UK will actually help Labor win the election. “In Makerfield, a Tory vote is a Labor vote,” he said.

“The Conservatives had an 80 seat majority and wasted billions of pounds during the Covid pandemic and opened the floodgates to mass immigration and effectively betrayed the British people. I’m confident, I’ll either win the place or come second.”

Mr Kenyon does not believe that Reform Britain is necessarily a right-wing party. “Some of their policies are quite left-wing,” he said. “As the state has taken 50% ownership of critical infrastructure companies, the other half is owned by UK pension funds.

“I think the party has taken sides from the left and the right. It’s as President Ronald Reagan once said, “it’s not about left and right, it’s about back and forth.”