Welsh Tories heard the Conservative leader, Iain Duncan Smith, condemn the "failure of politics" in a speech to their conference.

Continuing his efforts to reposition the Conservatives, Duncan Smith told party activists that the "interfering politics of the Labour and the Liberal Democrat parties" has failed Wales.

"I have spent much of the last three months looking first hand at the symptoms of political failure," he said.

"I have seen evidence of drug abuse. I have seen poverty - not just a lack of money, but of hope and ambition. I have seen the evidence of crime. The failure of politics is evident here in Wales."

During an address in which Duncan Smith sided with society's weakest - using the new buzzword "vulnerable" six times - Duncan Smith argued that a Conservative comeback was on the way

"We must be a party that speaks for vulnerable people as well as for the rest of society," he told the Conwy conference. "And we are becoming that party again. Here in Wales you're leading the way."

A Labour and Lib Dem alliance had associated both parties with failure and left the Conservatives the party of the Welsh people, the Tory leader claimed.

"If Labour have achieved anything through their devolution settlement, it is to expose the myth that they are on the side of people in Wales," he said.

"For they are now in government in Wales, propped up by their Liberal Democrat allies.

"The Liberals claim to be the real opposition to Labour in Westminster. They stood on their manifesto here in Wales.

"Yet at the very first sniff of power they have rolled over. Their cynicism takes your breath away."

Duncan Smith committed the Tories to making next year's elections to the Welsh assembly a "referendum on Labour's record".

"But they will also be a judgement of how much we've changed as a party," he said. "The Assembly elections must be the springboard for our fight back to win back Welsh seats in parliament."