‘Tories fighting to keep our country united’ amid independence talk – Badenoch

Kemi Badenoch has said her party “will not let” the first ministers of Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales “rip the United Kingdom apart”.

The leaders of devolved governments at Stormont, Holyrood and Cardiff Bay met in the Welsh capital last month, where they jointly declared that “Westminster’s time is coming to an end”.

Making a speech on the first day of her party’s conference in Birmingham, Mrs Badenoch said: “The Conservative Party is fighting to keep our country united.”

To applause, the Conservative Party leader added: “Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are being run by people who want to rip the United Kingdom apart – and my team will not let them.”

Earlier on Sunday, the shadow Scotland secretary Harriet Cross said the SNP and Plaid Cymru, the largest parties in Holyrood and the Senedd, “use independence as their safety blanket”.

She continued: “They know that they can use that to pull it over people’s eyes to distract from what they’re actually doing – and they always know that there’s going to be a rump of the country behind them if they wave that flag and shout loudly.

“But the Scots aren’t stupid – they can see what’s happening.

“They know that the country is not being run well. They know that they’re being taxed too high.

“They can see their businesses closing. They can see what’s happening on high streets.

“So, the SNP might want to say that they speak for Scotland or that they have Scotland’s best interests at heart.

“They do not – they have their interests at heart.”

Mims Davies, the shadow Wales secretary, said some supporters of independence in Wales had been “very, very clever”.

She said: “If you criticise the Senedd, they’ve managed to make that sound like you’re criticising the people of Wales.

“And that means instead of challenging the devolved powers around transport, around health, around connectivity, around education, people have been afraid to challenge those three decades of Labour in charge and now Plaid.”

Ms Davies, who was a minister in the Wales Office in 2018, described removing the tolls on the M4 and M48 Severn crossing one of the “proudest bits” of her time in government.

“It’s free to come and go but it’s really grown the economy,” she said.

“And that’s the sort of thing that Conservatives in power do.”

She criticised the previous Labour government in Wales for not building an M4 relief road around Newport, which former first minister Mark Drakeford dropped plans for in 2019 after around 30 years of discussions as the cost reached £1.4 billion.

The “queues are still there” on the existing M4 route, Ms Davies warned.

“We need to do something about that,” she added.

Compering their meeting, Conservative deputy leader and shadow Northern Ireland secretary Alex Burghart said: “After over a quarter of a century of devolution, it’s very hard to point to the upsides, isn’t it?”

At last month’s meeting, Sinn Féin’s Michelle O’Neill, the SNP’s John Swinney and Plaid Cymru’s Rhun ap Iorwerth signed a declaration which read: “The political landscape across these islands is changing.

“For the first time ever, people across these islands have first ministers in Scotland, in Wales and in the north of Ireland who are all committed to independence from the United Kingdom.

“For people watching across these islands – for people watching around the world – there could be no clearer sign that Westminster’s time is coming to an end.”

The leaders added: “Our nations have the right to self-determination. No Westminster government has the right to block democracy or undermine the principle that our people will decide their own future.

“We recognise that our parties have different constitutional positions and that each nation will determine its own future in its own way and in its own time.

“We call for the British Government to prepare for, plan and facilitate constitutional change in each jurisdiction.”

Mr Swinney predicted Andy Burnham would be “the last Prime Minister of the United Kingdom”.

Making a speech last week at the Labour Party conference in Liverpool, Mr Burnham said he was “utterly determined to prove” that Mr Swinney was “wrong”.

He described the United Kingdom as “a union of nations that gave trade unions and the cooperative movement to the world”.

He continued: “The National Health Service, a country that stood up to fascism, a country of solidarity not separation – that’s the Britain my dad represented.

“Britain is not perfect. It can be better and we will make it so – but it still stands for something worth saving, worth fighting for.

“And we will always be stronger facing a changing world together, rather than separating.”