91Èȱ¬

It took more than a moment and when it came, it was half-hearted.

When former Welsh Secretary Ron Davies mentioned the name Margaret Thatcher in front of a hall full of keen politics students in Cross Keys, it was clear he'd expected at least a heartfelt groan, if not some shaking of fists. All he got was vague head-shaking from a few in the front row, what seemed like recognition from text-books and lecture notes that they weren't really expected to cheer.

His talk on the process that led to and is devolution was peppered with fascinating asides and led to furious note-taking. The word "compromise" came up a lot and Labour - no surprises here - came in for stick. "Over the past ten years we should have been able to create a wealth-sustaining economy in Wales ... Instead it's been spent on free this and free that. I do hope they're not going to have to go up to old ladies soon and ask for those bus passes back".

Fast forward a session. "Welsh politics, when you think about it, has been about Labour versus the rest" said Jonathan Bradbury from Swansea University. This scenario, the students recognised.

But when the new Director of the Governance Centre at Cardiff University suggested they should consider the possibility of a political future - and a not so distant future either - where Labour is no longer the largest party in Wales, they dropped their eyes and wrote furiously but there was nothing to suggest that their jaws were dropping.

Professor Richard Wyn Jones prodded a bit more.

Who'd spotted that put the Conservatives in Wales on 16 seats at least? Granted, a lot has happened since then. The Brown bounce has come and gone. Didn't it come again only to go again? There may, of course, be yet another around the corner, enough to keep a coalition deal within Labour's grasp. But it was quite possible, he argued, that when Gordon Brown goes to the polls, David Cameron's Conservatives could do even better than Margaret Thatcher's in 1983 with their record haul in Wales of 14 out of 38 seats.

Nick Bourne was more modest in the Conservative lobby briefing this week but then, he would be. Never set the bar - or expectations - too high.

I'd been asked that morning by a visitor from London how many seats the party would win in Wales. I'd talked in terms of adding six or seven seats but put the question to Nick Bourne directly. Double figures he said, taking us all on a mental journey from Cardiff North and the Vale of Glamorgan to Carmarthen West and South Pembs, Maldwyn, Aberconwy, Delyn and the Vale of Clwyd.

Was he venturing on to serious double figures, rather than symbolic ones? Was he thinking Clwyd South and beyond? He wasn't. Yet. Labour may be about to take a kicking as the Tories did in 1997 but the Tories are not in the position Labour were back then. The deal between the people and Tony Blair had already been struck. No-one claims the same for David Cameron.

Nick Bourne stuck simply to 'double figures' and what would count as a major revival for the party in Wales.

The Welsh Conservatives have chosen twenty candidates and will be choosing more over the coming weeks. Welsh Labour must choose a new leader first, one who - a senior and shockingly realistic Labour figure suggested recently - must worry not just about appealing to but one who must appeal double quick to voters East of them too.

What about the North and those coastal seats? Isn't that where Labour are likely to lose big and perhaps lose long-term?

He rolled his eyes, as if already watching them fall like dominoes and his party, the one Cross Keys students will know was at one time the only truly national, all Wales party, retreating to the South and North East.

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