Labour’s Llandudno launchpad.

I’m writing this as I sit in the bay window of my hotel in Llandudno. I’m here for Welsh Labour’s annual conference which it’s fair to say is an important one for the party at a UK level as well as here in Wales.

View of Llandudno prom from my hotel.

As a sign of just how important, UK leader, Ed Miliband, has already arrived here this afternoon. He’ll be at a rally for a referendum Yes vote tonight and will be making a speech to the conference tomorrow.

It’s important to him because he needs Labour to do well in Wales on May 5th to show that the long climb back from last year’s General Election defeat is well underway.

Of course, doing well in May is important in itself to Welsh Labour which believes it’s capable of winning an outright majority of seats.

So Llandudno is Labour’s launchpad. By the end of the weekend we’ll know what the party will promise voters during the campaign.

Already this week, it’s unveiled pledges to make it easier for working people to see their GPs and funding for work placements.

There’s been another pledge today to create 500 extra community support officers.

Add in a further two promises which are expected over the course of the weekend and we’ll know what Welsh Labour’s Big Five are. It’s not yet clear whether or not these will appear on a pledge card, but you get the picture.

What won’t be discussed, publicly at least is what happens AFTER the election. As I mentioned, Labour’s leaders believe they can win a majority of seat in the next Assembly.

Where they differ amongst themselves is what having that majority would allow them to do when it comes to forming a government, either alone or with another party.

I’ve been given directly contradictory views. On the one hand, there are those who think a coalition would be necessary if Labour were to win 29 or 30 seats and desirable even if it were to win 31 seats. These are the people who think the arrangement with Plaid Cymru has worked well, delivering stable, strong and leftish government of the sort they’d like to see again.

But there are others who think Labour should seek to govern alone, certainly with 31, but also if it has 30, 29 or even 28 seats. This is the school of thought that also believes that, if Labour finds itself in need of a coalition partner, it should talk to the Liberal Democrats first.

One insider told me that party members would accept another coalition with Plaid only if it were ‘absolutely necessary’ and expressed the feeling that some Labour AMs were attracted to a voluntary arrangement because a large majority in the Assembly chamber would make life easier and ‘nobody said governing should be easy.’

An interesting divergence of opinion in private then, but I wonder how much we’ll see expressed in public here in Llandudno.

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