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Given it's still quiet in the chamber and the committee rooms of Cardiff Bay, let's indulge in a game of 'what if?'

Yes, I know it's an indulgence but there are plenty of people at it quietly, in corridors and in the canteen over lunch, so let's share where their 'what ifs' are leading them.

Ballot papers will be sent out soon to Conservative Party members, who'll be urged to use their vote to choose who they want to top the regional list in next year's Assembly election in their neck of the woods.

In South Wales Central the choice is between David Melding, who topped the list last time round and Andrew RT Davies, who in 2007 was second on the list but made it safely to Cardiff Bay. Mr Davies has stormed from one shadowing job to another. He's gone from transport to education and is now the Shadow Minister for Health - onwards and upwards. He talks bluntly, is nobody's fool, is much respected by his own group because they recognise in him a man who looks and sounds like a potential candidate to replace Nick Bourne when his time as leader is up. He loves nothing better than a verbal spat with the lobby who, in turn, love seeing him coming down the stairs to the briefing room.

He's a man who speaks as he finds. He is, after all, a farmer, what you'd call an old-fashioned countryside Tory. His views on devolution? He has, as one colleague put it, "accommodated" the party's more positive stance on the Assembly. "He's gone with it but" ... the "but" suggesting he'll be voting 'yes' but not manning the phones with evangelical zeal at the Yes campaign HQ come next Spring.

David Melding, on the other hand? Mr Melding doesn't do storming. He doesn't do verbal duelling. He does, however, do influence. He's the party's 'two-brains' in Wales, the long-time author of Welsh Conservative manifestos. He's the policy director who's been instrumental in turning the boss - and much of the party around him - from the anti-Assembly camp to supporters of it, supporters of further powers for it and influential players within it. If the party has indeed "Welshed up" then the man who saw that opportunity and persuaded them to grab it, was David Melding.

So how's the battle to top the regional list shaping up? David Melding had hoped, of course, he wouldn't be on the list at all. This time round he'd hoped to be taking the fight to Labour in the Vale of Glamorgan. The executive committee in the Vale of Glamorgan had other ideas.

Back in August they chose Angela Jones Evans to take on Jane Hutt - an excellent candidate in Mr Melding's view and he's not alone. Still. Why not choose the more senior Mr Melding? There's been that suggests Mrs Jones Evans was better placed, perhaps, to deal with the inevitable 'what-is-your-take-on-further-devolution' question, than Mr Melding. They would both have known what the executive committee wanted to hear. Some hedging of bets perhaps; tempered enthusiasm, with the emphasis on the tempered. Mr Melding would hardly have been in a position to deliver.

So Angela Jones Evans it was and if she goes one better than making the Vale a close run thing - and takes it for the Tories - then suddenly, who tops the regional list will matter rather a lot. Coming second on the list may well mean coming home to spend rather more time in the garden than you'd like.

So far it looks as though Mr Davies is ahead.

Back to that 'what if' game then. What if David Melding fails to be elected next May? What if he decides that, given the party membership would have chosen to put its policy director in a pretty vulnerable position, he doesn't fancy doing much more thinking for them?

Isn't it likely, suggest some Conservatives, that with such an influential figure absent from party thinking in Wales, that those parts of the party who've swallowed the recent approach but who've been dragged well out of their comfort zone along the way, will decide it's time to spit it out? Isn't it possible that with the party in government in Westminster, with a Conservative Prime Minister in Number Ten, they'd feel rather more gung-ho and decide to choose a new Welsh leader who would understand and recognise their discomfort, one who'd take what's known as "a more nuanced approach" to devolution?

The argument from people like David Melding has been that in Wales, the Conservative strategy must be to grow or die. The only way to grow, they argue, is to work with devolution, be prepared to work with other parties, do everything to ensure the Tories don't come to be seen as the eternal, official opposition - an uber protest group - in Wales.

is it fair to say, then, that without David Melding in their ranks, the impetus behind that strategy could ebb away?

A fair question and one which explains why the final order of one regional list is being asked about, mulled over and hotly debated - well beyond that bit of the country the Assembly, rather unpoetically, calls South Wales Central.

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