Only the Tories believe in keeping UK together, Badenoch tells Welsh conference

She said: “We in this room are the only people in Welsh politics who believe that Britain is stronger together.

“There is only one party in Welsh politics that cares about the United Kingdom, only one party that would vote against a referendum on separation, only one party will keep our country together.”

The Senedd elections on May 7 are expected to be a contest between Plaid Cymru and Reform UK, thanks to the previously dominant Labour Party’s slide in the polls since 2024.

Projections suggest either Plaid or Reform will be the largest party, but neither is likely to secure a majority, while although the Conservatives are currently polling in fourth place, they could still play a role in forming a governing coalition.

Describing Labour as “failed”, Mrs Badenoch attacked Plaid as “economically illiterate”, saying: “They don’t understand that Welsh independence would collapse the benefits system, it would wreck the pensions system.”

She added: “A Plaid government in the Senedd isn’t going to fix anything. It is going to break everything.”

Mrs Badenoch also attacked Reform as “grifters more interested in lining their own pockets than standing up for the UK”.

She pointed to the jailing last year of the party’s former leader in Wales, Nathan Gill, after he admitted taking bribes to make pro-Russian statements in the European Parliament.

Mrs Badenoch said: “They wave their Union flags around, but they don’t give a monkey’s about keeping the United Kingdom together.

“All they care about is getting into power.”

Mrs Badenoch also sought to reclaim the narrative about the Conservative Party’s legacy in Wales, where some former coal and steel communities still feel the impact from the deindustrialisation which came to a head under the Thatcher government.

The Conservative leader told the conference: “At its peak, Wales was at the heart of the global economy. The Labour Party likes to pretend that this all collapsed in the 1980s but that’s not true.

“The fact is, the decline started a long time before that, because it was soon after the Second World War that the global trade in coal began to change.

“But the wrong response came after. For too long, governments thought that an industrial strategy means doling out bungs to businesses with one hand while making them uncompetitive with the other.

“Labour have tried to blame Margaret Thatcher for everything. It’s not Mrs Thatcher who cancelled the M4 relief road. It is Welsh Labour.

“It wasn’t Mrs Thatcher who introduced the 20-mile per hour limit. That was Welsh Labour.”