With just a few months to go a General Election, all eyes – even in Wales –  are on Westminster.  Yet the next few months in Cardiff Bay promise to be just as interesting and decisive because the agreement that ended the impasse after the Assembly 2007 elections and which has held the Welsh Assembly Government together for over two and a half years now faces unprecedented challenges.  That these challenges are emerging in the run up to the Assembly’s own elections makes them all the more worth watching.

 Most obviously, Rhodri Morgan’s retirement not only brought a new First Minister but also heralded a new Cabinet, with new faces Leighton Andrews, Carl Sargeant, Huw Lewis and Lesley Griffiths all sitting alongside Plaid colleagues in government for the first time.  Who knows how it’s going – there’s being surprisingly little gossip – but the dynamics and relationships within Cabinet have surely changed. New personalities bring new priorities and new ways of working.

 These changes in personnel have come in the middle of one of the toughest budget cycles ever, certainly in the lifetime of the Assembly.  There is nothing more likely to increase tensions more than who takes the hit on spending cuts. Whether the coalition can weather the coming storm is the major challenge which it faces in the coming year.

 Add to this already heady mixture the inevitable strains of a UK general election, where parties which are pally in the corridors of power are suddenly pitching battle on the pavement, and suddenly the last two and a half years of ‘agreements’, delivery plans and deal making gets considerably less comfortable. At the end of it we also face a scenario which could, for the first time, see different parties in government and both sides of the M4.

 And then there is the small matter of the referendum on the Assembly’s powers. Here too stresses and suspicions could all too quickly come to the fore in recriminations about lack of commitment or lack of realism. We’ve already seen some signs and there could be more bubbling under the surface. The trigger motion may have received unanimous support in the Assembly but it now lies in the hands of the Secretary of State for Wales to lay it before Parliament within four months. And four months puts the deadline the other side of the General Election. Who knows who will be the Secretary of State for Wales then.

 With all these challenges on the near horizon, 2010 promises to be the most interesting year in Welsh politics for decades. With the first 100 days of the new First Minister’s term just one week away – on March 19th – the time is ripe to take stock of where we are, where we are going and how turbulent the journey will be.

The Bevan Foundation and Positif Politics are holding a conference which will examine all of these critical issues. For more information on the event please visit: http://www.positifpolitics.co.uk/march19.pdf