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Scaled back, more cost effective, still a substantial benefit to the Vale of Glamorgan and to Wales.

The Conservative take on the announcement that the St Athan Defence Academy survives but not as you know it. "St Athan is still the place" as Nick Bourne put it this morning. But what was to have been built in that place has been deemed not to be commercially viable. The plans then? To look again, scale things down but make clear that "St Athan is still very much in play".

The Labour take.

"Wales is under attack".

"Yet again the Tories have turned their back on Wales."

"They lied."

" ... a Government that at every turn is choosing not to do right by Wales".

Labour voices, one and all.

In press releases, interviews and passing comments the narrative is inescapable.

Yes, people know and accept that there's a national deficit to be dealt with. They support the need to cut. Both Labour and Plaid Cymru - governing parties in Wales - think the approach is wrong, that George Osborne will cut too deeply, too soon. That part of their story is clear.

But there's more.

Look what's happening, goes the narrative - Wales is being singled out, Wales is being treated unfairly, Wales is getting it in the neck, "is under attack" as one long-standing Labour Minister chose to put it.

The decision not to built the Severn Barrage, scaling St Athan down, right down perhaps, kicking into the very long grass plans to electrify the rail line from London to Swansea: if you're Labour's Kevin Brennan that's "an unprecedented triple whammy of cuts all in the space of a week".

If you're Nick Bourne - and Kirsty Williams - they're a chance to point out that Labour didn't give the go-ahead to a single one of them either. "To be fair" said the Lib Dem leader this morning, Labour hadn't rushed into anything because they too saw that the plan needed careful, detailed consideration. Unfair, cried Conservative Andrew R T Davies, citing "the previous Labour Government's inaction on this project."

They make it differently but their point is the same: Labour can cry foul today but they didn't make it happen either. "People see straight through that. People aren't stupid" - the same point again in typically blunt fashion from Conservative AM, Darren Millar.

Is Wales being unfairly singled out?

It's more reliant that most parts of the UK on public sector jobs so if those are hard hit, Wales will feel it more keenly.

There'll be a direct knock-on effect on a business sector that's relatively small in Wales, so less resilient than in other parts of the UK.

The benefits bill in Wales is relatively high so when the axe falls in the Department for Work and Pensions, the hit in Wales will be relatively big.

All facts. All explain why maps of the UK showing the parts that will be hardest hit by the Spending Review have Wales as one of the areas marked in red: hit hardest of all.

So far, so matters of fact.

The Severn Barrage? Would Labour have gone ahead with it? I've yet to meet a Labour politician who's answered that with anything approaching a definite 'yes'.

The electrification of the Great Western rail line? The Labour Transport Minister gave it the go ahead, but - and it's a big but, it remains to be seen whether the Network Rail budget can sustain the cost.

St Athan? In January, Labour in government, saying that "the project is under constant review to ensure it meets value for money requirements".

The Newport Passport Office? Nick Bourne winces at that one.

But he must wince all the more, knowing that there's another current working against him and working against Kirsty Williams. It's the current of popular opinion and attitudes in Wales that since 1997 has seen a tendency to give credit for good news to the Assembly and to lay the blame for bad news at the door of the UK government.

The next six months are about to test the Bourne Doctrine to its limits.

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