The veteran Plaid Cymru campaigner won the Caerphilly by-election
02:23, 24 Oct 2025Updated 02:23, 24 Oct 2025
Plaid Cymru candidate Lindsay Whittle looks on during the count at Caerphilly Leisure Centre(Image: Getty Images)
Lindsay Whittle has been named the new Senedd member for Caerphilly, after ending Labour’s unbeaten reign in the constituency.
Mr Whittle was elected with 15,961 votes, defeating Reform UK’s Llyr Powell who won 12,113 votes. Labour came third with just 3,713 votes.
A long-time Plaid Cymru candidate, Mr Whittle has been involved in elected politics in Caerphilly for decades.
He has stood in council elections 18 times, for Westminster 10 times, and for every Senedd election in the last 26 years.
While his time as a councillor has been consistently successful, higher office has eluded him, except one spell as a regional Assembly Member when he was elected to represent South East Wales from 2011 to 2016.
Born in the miner’s hospital he spent the first five days of his life in a shared council house and has spent his entire life living in the town, with many of his colleagues calling him “Mr Caerphilly”. For our free daily briefing on the biggest issues facing the nation, sign up to the Wales Matters newsletter here
Not from a political family, the now 72-year-old said it was listening to Gwynfor Evans campaign about Tryweryn which got him interested in politics, he told WalesOnline, but it was the 1968 Caerphilly by-election which really captured his attention.
A keen activist in the 1970s, he even missed an O-level because he was out canvassing for Plaid, he says.
He was first elected as a councillor in 1976 joining Rhymney Valley District Council in 1976 and a year later he became the youngest councillor in Great Britain when he joined Mid Glamorgan council aged 24.
He was Caerphilly council leader twice and leads the Plaid Cymru group.
Still a councillor, he also has four voluntary jobs, working in two local schools, a community coffee shop and a foodbank.
“I work better when I’m not paid. I can’t retire. All my friends are away all the time, spending their inheritance, but I can’t,” he told WalesOnline.
“It’s just got into the blood. I can’t get out now. I got on the bike and I can’t fall off yet. I love it. It’s what I do. I’m 72 now, and retirement is not for me,” he said.
A former council housing officer, he said he wants to go to the Senedd to be a noisy backbencher in a “future Plaid Cymru government”.