Labour blood-letting

Until this point, Welsh Labour has largely managed to avoid getting sucked into much of the blood-letting that has been on display among different wings of the Labour party in the past year.

There must now be a risk that it might.

Unlike the London Mayor Sadiq Khan and the leader of Scottish Labour Kezia Dugdale, Carwyn Jones has refused to publicly endorse Jeremy Corbyn or Owen Smith.

But where does he really stand? His former Welsh Government colleague Leighton Andrews is in no doubt, quoting on Radio Wales the Nye Bevan line: "Why look into the crystal ball when you can read the book."

In other words, read between the lines of what he's said about the contest so far and he believes it's pretty obvious that the first minister is not a supporter of Jeremy Corbyn.

Tensions

The closest Carwyn Jones has come to taking a view was when he said he would find it difficult to continue in the job if the overwhelming majority of his assembly members had failed to back him in the way that Labour MPs had failed to back Jeremy Corbyn.

The briefing against some senior Welsh Labour staff earlier in the week has clearly caused bad feeling.

No-one can say definitively whether the Corbyn camp has compiled a so-called hit-list of people in key positions who will be asked to consider their positions if he remains as leader.

Even if it doesn't, the response itself has told us just as much about the tensions that exist within the party.

The message from Welsh Labour to the Corbyn camp in no uncertain terms has been to keep well away from the internal staffing arrangements in Cardiff.

The response from one of Jeremy Corbyn's most high-profile supporters in Wales, Darren Williams, is to say that not only does such a hit-list not exist, but its very existence has been fabricated by anti-Corbyn members who want to define his campaign as intolerant and intimidatory.