Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ

It's just a few weeks ago that a senior Conservative was listing the projects that, as he saw it, would make or break his party's chances in next May's Assembly elections.

These were the low hanging fruit if you like, projects with a high profile, projects that voters would notice if they were all picked off, one by one, by the Treasury. They'd notice too if there was an attempt to insulate them in some way from the worst of the cuts - cuts he regarded as inevitable and the right thing to do.

He was talking about the Β£14bn defence training academy in St Athan, and the future of S4C - annual budget Β£100m.

If one of these fell headlong into the clutches of the Comprehensive Spending Review - well that was almost inevitable and fair enough. If two of them were seen to shrivel from artist's impressions to distant memories, then that was tough, very tough. If all three fell foul of the axe, then, he shook his head. Then tough but fair would start to feel like tough but as far as Welsh Conservatives were concerned, not quite fair. 0 out of 3 on top of massive public spending cuts and cuts to benefits too? Then he thought it inevitable that the size of the Conservative group in the Assembly would shrivel too.

All those hard-won concessions on 'Welshifying' the party? They'd count for very little if the party in Wales - and in particular perhaps, its voice in Westminster - hadn't been seen to protect Wales at all from the cuts to come.

Since then? You suspect he'll have given up on two of the three and is as much in the dark about the third as just about everyone else.

Since then? Newport Passport Office workers have heard that their jobs are on the line - the sort of announcement that turns headlines and huge numbers into real pain and possibly panic for three hundred famlies - families who'll not give two hoots about living in constituencies hotly contested by coalition parties right now but who might well care very much when it comes to voting in the Assembly election.

Since then he'll have no doubt stuck to his belief that cutting hard and cutting now is the right thing to do in the long term and that had such an eye-watering debt not been run up under Labour, his party, hand in hand with the Lib Dems, wouldn't be having to inflict such cuts at all.

Since then he'll have heard Lib Dem AM Jenny Randerson on Good Morning Wales distancing herself absolutely unambiguously from any proposal to make graduates pay an awful lot more for their university education in England - or leave higher education institutions in Wales looking like the 'cheap and cheerful' end of the market.

As for the Assembly Government: there's no talk of playing the same sort of game as the SNP government in Scotland, bringing out a 'what if' budget document hand in hand with the real thing. But the narrative? It's inevitable that what could be done if Wales were 'fairly funded', , will be part of that story.

I bumped into a Labour AM the other day. He's from a part of the country that research commissioned for tonight's big debate on the spending review suggests will be amongst the least resilient during the tough times to come. He shared the advice he'd been given by someone whose job it is to know these things.

It was this: "Come October the 20th, prepare to fall off a cliff".

Jason Mohammad and I will have a go at making clear the impact of the cuts to come on Wales in that debate tonight from Abertillery. Go on - join us on Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ 1 Wales tonight at 10.35.

(By the way this entry was written today - Tuesday. It initially appeared under yesterday's date because I opened the entry and started writing it last night. That'll teach me to try and get ahead ...)

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