Reform candidate wins party’s first seat in Carmarthenshire

REFORM UK has planted a flag in South West Wales after candidate Michelle Beer won a council by-election in Carmarthenshire.

She will represent Llanelli’s Lliedi ward after comfortably securing first place out of eight candidates. She polled 568 votes. Labour’s Andrew Bragoli came second with 312 votes.

Cllr Beer will be the first Reform UK councillor in Carmarthenshire and neighbouring Swansea, Pembrokeshire and Ceredigion. The by-election was held following the death of the unaffiliated Independent Lliedi councillor Anthony Leyshon.

Cllr Beer said the result hadn’t been too much of a surprise although she stressed she hadn’t been complacent.

“I knew the support for Reform in that area had been very strong,” she said. “We did face a lot of opposition, and we took nothing for granted.”

The 47-year-old said she hadn’t stood for public office before but had supported her husband, Gareth, also of Reform UK, who came second in the Llanelli seat in last year’s general election.

She said: “The opportunity came up and members said to me, ‘Michelle, you would be the ideal candidate.’ I love working with people and I thoroughly enjoyed listening to people.

“We started door-knocking quite early. All I kept hearing was that people felt they weren’t being listened to, and not enough was being done. They felt they had seen a deterioration. We formed our messages from there.”

She said this feeling of not being listened was directed at national and local politicians.

Asked what she knew about how county councils were run, she said she had an idea and expected to get up to speed quickly. She added that she’d had a stint working for a district council in New Zealand when she and Gareth lived there for a time.

Asked if she felt council tax was too high in Carmarthenshire, she said: “It can’t keep going up. I feel there is a lot of wastage. You can look for better value in procurement for example, just like in business.” She said she didn’t advocate services being cut though.

Reform UK had a lot of success in English council elections at the beginning of May, and leader Nigel Farage said he suggested that council diversity, equity and inclusion officers in Reform UK-run authorities should look for another job.

Was this a message Cllr Beer sought to bring to Carmarthenshire? “Not as a lone (Reform) councillor,” she said. “But maybe something looking ahead to 2027 (the next council elections).”

She said her priority was to respond to the needs of Lliedi residents, whether that be fixing potholes or ensuring bins were collected.

Cllr Beer grew up in Llanelli, where her parents, who had come over from Hong Kong, ran a takeaway restaurant. After college she had different jobs, including running a marketing business. Later she attended and graduated from a Bible school, and then did an office job supporting her husband’s business. The couple have four children – two boys and two girls.

Cllr Beer lives in Kidwelly, around eight miles west of Llanelli. Asked if that had given her cause for any concern, given that she was aiming to win a Llanelli seat, she said: “I travel to Llanelli almost every day, I know it very well. I would class it as my home town. I consider myself a Llanelli lass.”

Second-placed Mr Bragoli, a Llanelli town councillor, said he wished Cllr Beer good luck.

“She won, and I hope she sticks to her promises,” he said. “I wasn’t even a close second. If it wasn’t for my local popularity and my experience being a union rep at Trostre (steelworks) I think it could have been worse.”

Asked why he thought that, he said the UK Labour Government’s decision last year to means-test the winter fuel allowance for pensioners was, in his view, a “killer” politically-speaking.

Last week, following mounting political pressure, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer signalled a change in the threshold to allow more pensioners to qualify for the payment of up to £300.

Mr Bragoli credited Sir Keir for being “a bigger man” in changing direction but said the damage had been done. He said if the Lliedi by-election had happened 12 months ago he reckoned he would have been “a shoo-in”.

Carmarthenshire Council is run by a Plaid Cymru-Independent coalition. Lliedi is represented by two councillors, unaffiliated Independent Cllr Rob James and now Cllr Beer.

The result of the May 29 by-election was:

Michelle May Beer – Reform UK – 568
Andrew Bargoli – Welsh Labour – 312
Sharon Burdess – Independent – 116
Jonathan Edward Burree – Welsh Liberal Democrats – 41
Wayne Erasmus – Gwlad, Wales Can Be Better – 9
Alison Leyshon – Independent – 86
Taylor Reynolds – Plaid Cymru, The Party of Wales – 107
Richard Williams – Welsh Conservative Party Candidate – 93

The turnout was 33.36%.