David Darkin, chair of Llanelli Town Council who is seeking selection to stand as Labour’s Senedd candidate for the new Caerfyrddin super-constituency, has issued a strongly worded response to a recent article in the Daily Mail that described Llanelli as a town “full of drug addicts and dereliction”.
In a press release titled Llanelli Deserves Better Than This Lazy Stereotyping, Darkin accused the newspaper of parachuting in to “snap a few photos of boarded-up shops” and ignoring the wider community. He said the article failed to recognise the town’s resilience, volunteer networks, and small businesses, and instead fed a narrative of hopelessness that “serves only those who profit from division and despair.”
“Llanelli is more than its town centre,” Darkin wrote. “It’s the artists, the athletes, the carers, the teachers. It’s the people who stay and fight for their town, not those who drop in to sneer at it.”
The Mail Online article quoted several residents expressing frustration with the town’s condition and claimed that Labour had failed to improve the area. But Darkin pushed back, clarifying that Plaid Cymru, not Labour, runs Carmarthenshire County Council, which oversees local services and infrastructure. Llanelli Town Council, he noted, has a budget of just £1.5 million, compared to the county’s £500 million, and is responsible for community-level initiatives.
“To blame Labour for the state of the town centre is not only misleading, it’s a deliberate distortion of how local government works,” he said.
Reform UK’s rise adds political pressure
Darkin’s response comes amid a period of political flux in Llanelli, where Reform UK has made significant gains. A recent MRP forecast by More in Common, modelling voting intentions for the next UK parliamentary election, projects Reform to win 290 seats nationally, with Labour trailing on 126 — and Llanelli now seen as a decisive Reform win by a 29-point margin.
Locally, Reform’s momentum has been reflected in recent election results. In 2024, Gareth Beer came within a few hundred votes of unseating Dame Nia Griffith MP, and in May 2025, his wife Michelle Beer won a county council seat on Carmarthenshire Council, defeating Labour in the Lliedi ward by over 250 votes.
However, projections for the Caerfyrddin Senedd constituency, where Darkin is seeking to stand, suggests a more fragmented contest. According to polling reported by Swansea Bay News, Reform UK is projected to win three of the six seats, with Plaid Cymru taking the other three — leaving Labour currently without a projected seat in the constituency.
While Reform’s rise reflects broader dissatisfaction with mainstream parties, Darkin argues that sensationalist media coverage only fuels disillusionment — and distracts from the real work being done to improve the town.
“We don’t need outsiders telling us who we are,” Darkin concluded. “We’re Llanelli. And we’re not done yet.”
