Politics Andy burnham makerfield Robert Kenyon

Robert Kenyon’s Andy Burnham ‘gotcha’ didn’t go entirely to plan and said so much more about him than it did his Labour rival

John Plunkett. Updated June 9th, 2026

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A week and a bit to go until the Makerfield by-election, which looks set to decide not just who the constituency’s next MP is but the path of politics in the UK for the next generation or so. No pressure, voters!

Reform UK’s candidate Robert Kenyon, it’s fair to say, wasn’t overly impressive on Question Time last week, so surely he’d do better on this BBC Politics panel alongside his Labour rival and party leadership hopeful, Andy Burnham.

Never let it be said that Kenyon hadn’t done his prep, so much so that someone had written him a proper ‘gotcha’ question to take down Burnham.

Well, that’s what it looked like. If only he could have strung more than three words together in a row.

The look on Andy Burnham’s face at the end there, as he tries to work out what the hell it was he was supposed to be responding to, surely said it all. But just in case it doesn’t, these people said it best.

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