Question: What are the priorities for the Conservatives in Wales in 2008?

Bourne: The main challenge is going to be the local authority elections because all council seats in Wales will be fought and we will be putting up far more candidates than we have done previously.

Traditionally this is our weakest area in elections in Wales so we are hoping for great things and to win many more seats and perhaps more councils.

Question: Does the fact that Labour and Plaid Cymru are in coalition together give you an electoral stick to beat them both with?

Bourne: Obviously we will be pointing to things that they have done as an assembly government and where they have got it horribly wrong and no doubt that will help us and other opposition parties, I've no doubt about that.

They are wedded together in the assembly, if things go well, which they don't appear to be doing, they'll get the credit and if things go badly, as they are, they'll get the blame.

Question: Will the One Wales coalition last the year?

Bourne: Oh yes I think it will last the year and probably longer, it's the only show in town and they have to stick together. The ministerial team will be keen to do that.

Whether or not their backbenchers will be so keen, and whether or not their activists will be so keen, I think is another matter.

There are going to be difficulties, clearly they are not delivering on the constitutional promises and all of the financial things have been diluted as well and it doesn't seem to be a very happy alliance but it will hold together, certainly in the short term.

Question: As you say many activists will be very unhappy at the coalition - will that cause problems?

Bourne: If you look at Gwynedd, the parents that are fighting to keep schools open will be blaming the Welsh assembly government and the alliance that includes Plaid Cymru.

At the same time Plaid have got precious little on the constitutional front despite that seeming to be the basis on why they went into an alliance with the Labour Party. So an awful lot of activists wouldn't have wanted to go into a coalition with Labour had they had a choice. So I think there will be difficulties ahead.

Question: Has becoming the official opposition helped to raise the Conservatives' profile and improve your performance?

Bourne: I believe it has. As I said to our team recently it has been the best term for the Conservative group in the assembly that I can remember.

It's a very good, very cohesive group, we've got new members who are performing extremely well and as a shadow ministerial team it has raised our profile.

In the third-term assembly opposition parties get more guaranteed debating time anyway and so we've had many, many more opposition debates than we have had previously and I think we have made the best use of them.

It is government and opposition and we are the only real opposition so we have been getting more coverage and a higher profile so it has been good for us.

Question: Won't extending devolution incrementally in the devolved parts of the UK inevitably lead to a break up?

Bourne: I don't see that at all, I don't understand people who put that argument forward and say there is something inevitable about independence.

That has not been the case in Spain, in Germany, the US or Australia so I can't see that if you have a separation of powers for the constituent parts of a nation state that it leads to independence.

In fact you can put forward a very strong case that it is much more likely to bind parts together if you do recognise that they are different and act differently on areas of policy, obviously for foreign policy or taxation but elements of domestic policy.

Question: So you don't believe that David Cameron's desire to give English-only votes on English matters in Westminster will erode those bonds?

Bourne: I'm not concerned about it and I don't think it would erode the bonds. The English dimension is the dimension that's not been answered since there has been devolution in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

There is a measure of it in London but nowhere else in England.

As by far the largest part of the UK, we have to see how we treat English issues where we have seen in the past measures carried on the back of Scottish MPs.

It does not make sense and that matter has got to be addressed.