Ex-Tory defence minister joins Reform UK

Sarah Atherton is the former MP for Wrexham

A former Welsh Conservative MP says she has joined Reform UK and wants to stand for the party in next May's Senedd election.

Ex-Wrexham MP and former junior defence minister Sarah Atherton left the Tories earlier this year.

She now wants to be a Reform candidate in the new Fflint Wrecsam constituency having "put her hat in the ring".

Atherton told the BBC she had joined Reform because of her concerns over a "loss of national identity and pressure on public services".

She added that she had "had enough of 26 years of decline in Wales under a Labour and Plaid Cymru pact".

Atherton added that she worried "like millions of others" about the direction the UK was heading.

It comes as Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch told BBC Wales that turning around the fortunes of her party cannot happen "overnight", with bumps in the road along the way.

Atherton is the third high-profile former Conservative to join the part in Wales, after former Brexit minister David Jones and Conservative Member of the Senedd Laura Anne Jones.

Reform is currently deciding who will be its candidates next May.

Under Wales' new election map, 16 seats will each elect six members, chosen from party lists.

Atherton left the Conservative Party in August having said the previous year that the Conservatives should "embrace" Nigel Farage and Reform.

At the time she said the Conservatives were "impotent" and "no longer align with her values or ideology".

Having served as Wrexham MP from 2019 until she lost her seat in 2024, Atherton was parliamentary under-secretary of state for defence people, veterans and service families for a brief period in 2022.

She was the first Conservative politician to represent the Wrexham constituency since its creation in 1918.

Ms Badenoch later told PA News: "Former MPs have been defecting. Many of them are going where they think the wind is blowing."

But she conceded that leaders are "always sad to lose party members".

"What I would say to the public is that the Conservatives had a historic defeat. This is a tough time for us.

"But if people cannot deal with tough times in opposition, they definitely will not be able to deal with tough times in government."