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The path to "Super Thursday" appears less than smooth despite enthusiasm in both Westminster and Cardiff Bay for three votes - Welsh Assembly elections and two referenda - on the same day next May.

Thirteen days ago, the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ reported growing pressure behind the idea of postponing next May's elections to the Welsh Assembly by one month. One expert suggested it was 80 to 90 per cent certain.

Welsh Tory leader Nick Bourne had written to other party leaders with the suggestion that they ask the Secretary of State for Wales, Cheryl Gillan, for a delay.

There was cross-party concern about insufficient "breathing space" between a referendum on the assembly's powers - likely in March - and elections in May. That concern was amplified once the UK government announced plans for a referendum on the voting system used for Westminster elections to be held on May 5.

First Minister Carwyn Jones told us: "I've already raised the issue of delaying the assembly elections with the Secretary of State and I'll be doing the same thing again on Monday. I've not yet had a response from her. We're also hoping that we can take a cross party view on this.

"What Nick is asking for has already been done."

You may have been left with the impression that the assembly government wanted the elections moved. The appeared to confirm this impression.

The Secretary of State said she would give her response when she received a formal request, prompting an anonymous source close to the First Minister to tell the Western Mail: "What is the point of having these bilateral meetings between the First Minister and the Secretary of State if everything is supposed to be put into writing?"

Not writing things down does allow politicians to wriggle out of clearly misleading impressions given.

So days ago, Carwyn Jones told the Welsh media: "We do not want the assembly elections moved."

Instead, he wants the UK government to move the referendum on voting systems and has written to David Cameron to tell him so:

"We do not want the assembly elections moved, they have been in place now for the last four years and we take the view that if anything needs to be moved, it's the neophyte election, in other words, the AV referendum, and that the assembly elections should then stay as they are."

Respect agenda or not, there seems little chance of Mr Cameron agreeing to this request. (The Assembly's presiding officer, Lord Elis-Thomas, has already announced his conversion to the idea of three votes on one day.)

Mr Jones added: "I think the AV referendum should go off until the end of next year, quite frankly. As far as the assembly elections are concerned, they should be held on May the 5th, but there is no rush as far as the AV referendum is concerned, as it would only affect the general election which would take place, on current plans, in May 2015."

The Press Association's Daniel Davies asked Mr Jones: "I thought you had already asked the Secretary of State to delay the assembly election by four weeks so it wouldn't clash with the other referendum"

Carwyn Jones: "No. We've never done that"

Daniel Davies: "So there's been no agreement between party leaders to ask the Welsh Secretary to delay the election?

Carwyn Jones: "No"

Daniel Davies: "Any idea why Nick Bourne said that there had been?"

Carwyn Jones: "Never was. There was never an agreement to delay the election. It was discussed, but there was never an agreement to delay the election. It was certainly never agreed by the Liberal Democrats, I can promise you that and it was something that we never formally put to the Secretary of State."

Not formally, perhaps, if you insist on writing everything down although as one UK government source says, there's certainly been "a change of emphasis". The unpublished minutes of a meeting between Carwyn Jones and Cheryl Gillan apparently suggest a desire on the former's part to delay the elections.

Meanwhile, Cheryl Gillan is still working to a timetable of an assembly powers referendum in March and deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg told MPs this morning: "In Wales, to hold three different elections in a matter of weeks, would be a mistake."

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