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Back for 24 hours and I'm yet to have a conversation that hasn't included the 'l' word: leadership.

Let's start with Labour.

Wouldn't Peter Hain rather chew off his own right arm than use it to sign his name,

Why on earth would anyone imagine a scenario that has Eluned Morgan MEP, Cardiff girl, throwing away her chances of taking over from Rhodri Morgan as AM for Cardiff West one day and standing, instead, in an almost certainly unwinnable (and imaginary) by-election in Clwyd South?

Why publish now a story that did the rounds in Cardiff bars (I'm looking at a saved text message sent from one) some months ago. It may have been a little less embroidered but it was dismissed even then as, well, unlikely really. It is, as one of my colleagues puts it poetically , the kind of stuff the green-fingered Tory parliamentary candidate Glyn Davies would put on his roses.

So why now? Could it be that hidden in the Western Mail's story there is a sentence - a little seed - that someone hopes has been planted deep enough to pass us by? But that in such fertile ground it might be left to grow unnoticed?

How about this one from an anonymous source:

"The obvious solution is to buy time by having Rhodri stay on until at least 2010".

Let's just keep an eye on it, see how it fares and move on to Plaid.

Is it likely that Dafydd Iwan will see off Elfyn Llwyd's challenge for the presidency of Plaid this Sunday and retain the job by a huge margin/less of a margin than he thinks.

So the story goes, though as to margins, everyone seems to be guessing. What they all know to be true is that the job ain't what it used to be and that the boss is Ieuan Wyn Jones.

And so to the Lib Dems.

Has Kirsty Williams finally stopped pretending (and I mean pretending to herself) that she doesn't have to go for the Liberal Democrat leadership in the Assembly when Mike German stands down on October 11th?

Apparently, yes.

So prepare yourselves for Brecon and Radnor young gun v Cardiff Central old hand, Kirsty Williams v Jenny Randerson. Get ready too for that conference in Clydach on October 11th where the starting gun is fired and the party will debate dozens (94 pre-pruning) amendments to the constitution. From who should be Welsh leader - leader of the AMs, MPs, MEPs (they're in optimistic mood), any one of the above, none of the above - to the so-called "Eleanor Burnham clause", the one that would allow an ambitious AM wanting to stand for the leadership but who just can't seem to persuade a single fellow AM to nominate them, to turn instead to an MP.

Ah. It's just as though I never went away.

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