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This morning Carwyn Jones was upfront about his leadership ambitions.

No, not THAT leadership. How many times do they have to tell us? Until Labour HQ fire the starting pistol, there is no race to fill Rhodri Morgan's shoes. Got it? The First Minister may have made it clearer than ever over the weekend that he plans to go in the Autumn. He spelled out that the Assembly Government will have put everything possible in place by then to combat the economic downturn ... in other words, if he stands down as planned, he won't be leaving Wales in the lurch.

But a race to succeed him, to discuss the future direction of the party in Wales without him?

No, the Counsel General was thinking big, extending a warm welcome to Barack Obama to the Assembly in future before admitting that he "wasn't sure he'd want to be in his shoes".

Rhodri Morgan was a pretty fervent Hillary Clinton man but today, in the chamber, the four party leaders were confirmed Obama-ites. And they spoke just as that - four party leaders, who in turn hoped and even prayed that the 44th President of the United States turns "a brief moment of hope" as Nick Bourne put it, into "a time of hope".

From the First Minister recollections of moving to the United States in 1961, of seeing segregation, racism "up close and personal", of thinking then that dreadful things he'd seen in the South couldn't happen in the UK.

Then this: that "when you see a black president elected in the USA, you also have to say ruefully that couldn't happen in Britain."

He didn't elaborate - but in a chamber with its single AM from an ethnic minority - he did seem to be saying that somehow, somewhere along the way, the tables have been turned.

UPDATE: He does elaborate

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