Reform investigates whether Makerfield candidate’s sexist posts were costly

Nigel Farage with his party’s candidate, Robert Kenyon. Farage called Andy Burnham’s win ‘emphatic’. Photograph: Adam Vaughan/EPA

Reform UK is examining whether sexist comments by its candidate in the Makerfield byelection may have harmed the party’s chances, after Nigel Farage accepted the result had disappointed him.

The party’s examination of its defeat comes after Andy Burnham won 55% of the vote share in a poll that Reform hoped would be a tightly fought battle between the Labour leadership hopeful and its own candidate, Robert Kenyon, a local plumber.