Reform UK Storms to 'Sensational' Victory in Plaid Cymru Leader's Backyard

By the time most of Anglesey was asleep, the political ground beneath it had quietly shifted. In the early hours, in a ward that has long thought of itself as Plaid Cymru country, a party routinely dismissed as a protest vehicle walked off with a thumping win, and Reform UK is determined to make sure nobody misses the symbolism.

Ynys Gybi, which covers much of Holy Island off the coast of Anglesey, has delivered Reform its first seat on the Isle of Anglesey County Council, turfing Plaid out of a patch it once treated as comfortably its own.

Reform's candidate, Celfyn Furlong, took 603 votes, 43.9 per cent of the ballot, from a standing start, having not even contested the ward in the 2022 local elections. That is not a gentle toe in the water; it is a cannonball.

Plaid, for all its talk of rooted localism, was shoved into second on just 25 per cent, its vote share dropping 3.7 points despite the awkward fact that its leader, Rhun ap Iorwerth, represents Anglesey in the Senedd. Labour's support cratered to 12.5 per cent, down 11.3, and the Conservatives slumped to 8.2 per cent, shedding 13.1 points.

The Green Party, which hadn't been on the ballot last time, crept into fourth with 8.6 per cent. For the old parties, the collective story is one of voters quietly walking away.

This was not some random vacancy. The by-election followed the death of Trefor Lloyd Hughes, a long-serving Plaid councillor and former president of the Football Association of Wales, whose personal clout had long stabilised the ward.

An independent who once took more than a quarter of the vote did not stand this time, leaving a pool of unanchored, dissatisfied voters up for grabs. Reform, unlike the others, spoke directly to that restless mood, and it shows.

Furlong did not pretend this was a modest, localised protest. He told residents Ynys Gybi had 'voted for Reform' and would now 'have Reform', promising not a fleeting experiment but a sustained attempt to speak for a community that feels ignored.

On a council where Plaid remains the largest group and independents still matter, a lone Reform councillor changes more than the arithmetic; it changes the atmosphere.

Reform UK Victory Redraws Ynys Gybi Map

Reform's leadership wasted no time in turning a single ward result into a broader political narrative. Dan Thomas, unveiled barely a day earlier as Reform's new leader in Wales, branded the Ynys Gybi result a 'sensational' victory and brandished it as proof that the party can 'win absolutely anywhere here in Wales.'

From 'former Labour heartlands to the former Plaid heartlands', he insisted, Reform is now hunting 'every single vote' to deliver the change Wales 'desperately needs.' The hyperbole is intentional; it is how insurgent parties breathe.

Thomas is not some unknown local activist plucked from obscurity. He is a former Conservative, an ex-leader of Barnet Council in London, sold to Welsh voters by Nigel Farage as a 'battle hardened' operator who understands budgets and bitter political weather.

Farage lavished praise on his ability to 'keep a calm head through the good and bad, because you're always going to get both in a campaign', a knowing nod to the bruising fights Reform expects to encounter.

Yet for all the self-congratulation, Thomas arrives with baggage and vocal critics. Welsh Conservative Senedd leader Darren Millar accused Reform of effectively parachuting Thomas back to Wales to exploit the expanded Senedd system, painting him as an opportunist rather than a saviour.

Plaid's Rhun ap Iorwerth went further, dismissing Reform as 'recycled, washed-out Tories' seeking refuge now the Conservatives are 'dead in the water', and claiming Wales is simply 'a stepping stone' to getting Farage into Downing Street. It is a scathing line, and a revealing one. Parties do not waste that kind of fire on a force they think is irrelevant.

Thomas, for his part, is not interested in soft edges. In his launch speech he railed against what he called 'weak and woke policing' in London and blamed 'uncontrolled immigration' for housing pressures and a perceived fraying of community life.

He described HMOs as a symptom of a crisis fuelled by immigration and warned he did not want Wales to 'go down the same path as London.' His promise of a 'positive, ambitious manifesto' sits uncomfortably alongside that grim diagnosis, but it is precisely this mix of grievance and promise that has energised sections of the electorate, and alarmed his opponents.

Reform UK Tested Beyond Plaid Cymru Heartland

It would be easy for Reform to get drunk on its Anglesey success. The party, however, also had a reminder that insurgent momentum only gets you so far. In Clevedon South, a North Somerset ward more familiar with straight Labour–Tory tussles, Reform fell agonisingly short of a second scalp, losing to Labour by 350 votes to 334.

Labour held the seat on 29 per cent, while Reform, again from nowhere, surged to 27.7 per cent. The Conservatives limped in on 18.6 per cent, the Greens on 16.3 per cent, with the Liberal Democrats trailing at 8.3 per cent.

For Reform's true believers, the villain was obvious: the Conservative vote. Online, supporters loudly complained that Tory voters had 'let Labour in', arguing that a modest tactical switch would have delivered the ward into Reform's hands.

That grievance dovetails perfectly with the party's growing mantra that a Conservative vote in 2026 is, in practice, a vote for Labour. Richard Tice, Reform's deputy leader, has boiled it down to a stark line: 'Vote Tory get Labour... vote Reform get Reform.' Crude? Yes. Clear? Absolutely, and clarity is a rare currency in British politics just now.​

The deeper question is whether Ynys Gybi was an early tremor or the first crack in a much larger dam. For now, the numbers on Anglesey show Reform hoovering up support from Plaid, Labour, the Conservatives and disillusioned independents in a ward that should, by any conventional reading, have been hostile territory.

That is what ought to unsettle the established parties far more than the addition of one new councillor.

In Rhun ap Iorwerth's own political backyard, a party many dismissed as a noisy sideshow has planted a flag with unnerving confidence. On a cold February night, Ynys Gybi offered a blunt reminder: once voters decide they've had enough of the old tribes, the map can start to move very quickly indeed.