Reform UK's candidate in the Makerfield byelection, Robert Kenyon, has publicly embraced an endorsement from Ant Middleton, the former SAS: Who Dares Wins presenter and convicted criminal whom Reform itself had previously cut loose over his increasingly extreme rhetoric. Kenyon shared a video calling Middleton "one of my heroes." The endorsement is not an accident of poor vetting. It is a strategic calculation driven by competitive pressure from Restore Britain, the hard-right party launched by former Reform MP Rupert Lowe after his falling out with Nigel Farage. Middleton's record is well-documented. He said "well done Southampton" after violence following the murder of Henry Nowak. He has stated that Muslims cannot lead Christian nations and that first-, second-, and third-generation immigrants should be barred from top government positions. He appeared alongside Tommy Robinson (Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) at Robinson-organised rallies. He was convicted in 2013 of unlawful wounding of a police officer and common assault on another outside a nightclub. In 2025, he was banned from serving as a company director after his company failed to pay more than £1m in tax. Channel 4 dropped him in 2021 over comments on the pandemic and Black Lives Matter. Reform had previously distanced itself from Middleton as his positions migrated further right. He had addressed the Reform UK conference in 2024 and was once floated as a London mayoral candidate, but the party tried to create separation as his rhetoric escalated. That separation has now collapsed in Makerfield. The reason is arithmetic. A leaked poll circulated among Labour staffers and published by The i Paper puts Labour at 35%, Reform at 24%, and Restore Britain at 13%. That 13% is almost certainly drawn from the same voter pool Reform needs. Restore Britain's platform — including pledges to deport millions — maps closely to the rhetoric Middleton himself has been amplifying on X. Middleton has shared Restore's messaging, writing that "An English mayor of London will help flush them out to our shores for ease of deportation." The Middleton endorsement is Reform's attempt to recapture voters drifting toward Lowe's outfit without formally adopting Restore's platform. It outsources the extreme messaging to a celebrity proxy. Kenyon gets the cultural signal — military toughness, anti-establishment credibility — without having to put Middleton's specific policy positions on a leaflet. Labour's Anna Turley, the party chair and Cabinet Office minister, called it out directly: "Reform have no shame." She connected the endorsement to a pattern, noting that Reform's previous byelection candidate was endorsed by Tommy Robinson. Turley highlighted Middleton's criminal record, his anti-Muslim statements, and his £1m-plus tax debt. The structural dynamic is clear. Reform is being outflanked on its right by a splinter party built from its own defectors. The response is not to hold the centre-right line but to chase the flank — using celebrity endorsements as deniable escalation. The voters of Makerfield are the audience for a bidding war they did not initiate, between parties competing over who can most aggressively channel grievance into votes.
