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Tonight the two authors of the best books published in Wales during this past year, both in Welsh and in English, will be named and lauded and given £10,000 , in the hope they manage to buy some time to write another cracker. Then again they might find it comes in useful, as the winner of the Artes Mundi prize did a few years ago, to sort out the damp in the cellar. Why not. Even conceptual artists obviously appreciate dry cellars.

This morning we're starting the day with a narrative, a story that's now being told, honed and retold every week. A comment here a press release there but put them together and what you have is a growing narrative. It's the Welsh Labour party who are doing the telling and the story they're relating is all about the new Secretary of State, Cheryl Gillan, an MP who represents an English constituency but who is now heading up the Wales Office - or as it's been newly re-named, or re-re-named, the Welsh Office.

At least that's where the story begins - with a new Welsh Secretary and with a growing sense amongst Labour MPs that she's seen as weak link and is a character around whom a whole story can be very successfully spun.

There was the town crier who strode back and forth in front of the Senedd a few weeks ago and welcomed 'the Governor General who's dropped in on us here in Wales ... come out and pay your respects'.

She and her party laughed it off as a stunt that made Labour look pathetic.

Pick up the narrative from there.

The Assembly Government joins in. The new Welsh Secretary, they said, had made an announcement about the date of the referendum in the Commons before letting them know.

A letter had been sent but arrived a few hours after the announcement had been made. Not good enough, said WAG. Hardly worth such an eruption, said the Welsh Office.

There was Peter Hain in the House of Commons last week, who came as close as parliamentary rules allow to accusing Cheryl Gillan of lying. She should, he warned, remember where she was and tread very carefully before she made any more claims about what he had - or more significantly - had failed to do on securing a referendum before the General Election.

She came out fighting and pretty much repeated her claims.

Just yesterday, two Labour MPs picked up on and turned the screw a few more times in letters to the Cabinet Office. Jessica Morden asked for an investigation into the conduct of the Secretary of State, while Owen Smith wanted "an assessment of the additional accommodation costs to the public purse of visits to Wales by a Secretary of State who is an MP representing an English constituency?"

Fair dues, you might say, though the Cabinet Office didn't seem to think so.

Yesterday too the news broke that the Housing LCO is to be allowed on its way without amendment, because David Jones, the Parliamentary Under Secertary of State, had discovered there'd be no time to consider changes and get it through before recess. Have it then, he effectively said ... but bear in mind those reassurances you gave us that you've no intention of using the bit we disagree with.

An exmaple, said Mr Jones, of the new coalition government getting the job done, proof that the Welsh Office intended 'mutual respect' to mean something. "A total humiliating capitulation by the Wales Office" said Shadow Wales Office minister (Labour are sticking to Wales Office) Wayne David. "The Wales Office has become a beleaguered and rudderless Department."

Then this morning's session of the Welsh Grand Committee - watch it and read about it here.

Along came the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Danny Alexander - something of a surprise, it turns out, for those there. So the narrative moves on. Not, after all, a further sign of transparency but a "humiliation" for the "under-fire Welsh Secretary" said Wayne David, again. Why had she been "dumped ... at the last minute"? Why had the Welsh Secretary's first Welsh Grand Committee "descended into farce."

Then he brought the story bang up to date: "It pains me to say it, but the Wales Office, under Cheryl Gillan's leadership, is becoming a laughing stock in Whitehall."

I don't know how Cheryl Gillan and her team intend to respond this time, if at all. What's clear is that they can't have failed to spot the story in which the boss is starring here, nor how her character's storyline is developing. They must know too that the poltical force driving the story is renowned for very successfully driving home messages that tend to stick. Say it loud enough and often enough and at least some of the people will believe you.

So: where does the story go from here?

UPDATE

This from Cheryl Gillan: "I was delighted when Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander was able to attend Welsh Grand today to address members on the implications of the emergency Budget on Wales.

"But this opportunity to have serious and constructive discussions on the Budget and its implications on Wales was totally wasted by Labour MPs who were more concerned with making political mischief making than serious debate.

"I was disappointed by the playground tactics of Labour members in trying to reduce today's Welsh Grand into a political circus, with no apparent wish to do real work on Welsh issues.

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