WALES has always been seen as a Labour heartland, so the Conservative Party gaining power was always going to be a tall order.

And since the dawn of the Welsh Assembly they’ve been in a state of perpetual opposition, from a low of nine seats in 1999 to a high of 14 in 2011, but never quite coming within reach of real power.

Although there was a faint gimmer of hope with talks of a ‘rainbow coalition’ with Plaid Cymru and the Lib Dems - forcing Labour out of office - in 2007, this never materialised after the Lib Dems backed out.

The picture in Parliament has been broadly similar, with Conservative MPs always far outnumbered by Labour. The party in Wales was wiped out together in Westminster in 1997 and 2001, only returning to government in 2005.

And, although early polls suggested Labour could be facing a disastrous General Election last year, support swung back around in the ruling party's favour by election night. And the result was particularly bruising for the Conservatives, with three of its Welsh MPs losing their seats - all of them having been elected for the first time just two years earlier.

Cardiff North’s Craig Williams had succeeded party colleague Jonathan Evans, who had himself won the seat from Labour’s Julie Morgan in 2010 by just 194 votes. But he was ousted by Labour’s Anna McMorrin, while Byron Davies, who had won the Gower from Labour’s Liz Evans in 2015 by an even smaller margin of just 27 votes, was unseated by Labour’s Tonia Antoniazzi.

And James Davies lost his Vale of Clwyd seat to Chris Ruane, who he had unseated just two years earlier.

In her speech to the Welsh Conservative Party conference last Friday Theresa May said the party had “a lot to be proud of”, pointing to victories in last year’s Local Government Elections.

“You represent the best of our party,” she said. “A love of country, a commitment to public service and a determination to build a better future for the people we serve.”

She added: “I am proud of your achievements – from the town hall and National Assembly, to the cabinet table.”

But what position are the Welsh Conservatives really in?

“There’s real positive momentum behind the party here in Wales,” said party leader Andrew RT Davies when I spoke to him at the conference last week.

“Ukip are splintering in all sorts of directions. Labour are up for a leadership battle now but we’ve got to wait eight months for that so they can sort out their internal voting system, and Plaid, well, you almost have to count the numbers in the Assembly to make sure another one hasn’t peeled off or been kicked out.

“What people in Wales want is a political party that delivers for them their community and their country.

“That’s what the Conservative Party is about, it’s the national party of Wales and the national party of the UK and we’ll go on doing what we do best, which is delivering for people, communities and country.”

Mr Davies, who has been at the helm of the group since July 2011, added: “What I am is aspirational for Wales and ambitious for Wales.

“If you want to change Wales for the better, and we’ve had almost 20 years of Labour government, you’ve got to have a plan for government.

“We are launching the policies, but there’s no point in doing all the policy work and launching those policies if you haven’t got a plan to get into government.

“What people want is to see an alternative here in Wales. We are mapping out that alternative as well as working with colleagues at the other end of the M4 to benefit Wales, such as getting rid of the Seven bridge tolls.”

But political commentator Roger Awan-Scully of Cardiff University is less positive about the party.

“They’re sort of stuck,” he said.

“It’s very difficult to see how they can get out of the position of being the second or third place and influence anything.

“At the last Assembly election they didn’t get an injection of any new people. And Andrew RT Davies has never really struck much of chord with the public or anyone outside of the party membership and activists.

“And I’ve heard it said the secretary of state (Alun Cairns) is a man who is liked but not respected.”

He added: “When they were trying to say something positive about their election record at the conference they pointed to the council election, and they still finished a fairly distant third in that.

“On the other hand they are running Westminster, but they don’t have particularly strong opposition against them there.

“Hanging over all of this is the huge issues of Brexit.

“If that goes wrong it could blow the party apart.”

So what’s the answer?

Also speaking at last week’s spring conference, Welsh secretary and Vale of Glamorgan MP Alun Cairns reflected on advice from Nick Edwards, Lord Crickhowell, who died in March.

“He encouraged us to look beyond our borders and to internationalise,” he said.

“In the face of opposition, he oversaw considerable inward investment, and championed redevelopment and most famously delivered the last major infrastructure project in Wales, the transformation of Cardiff Bay.”

And in his speech Mr Davies suggested there may be scope to work with other parties, saying: “No party has a monopoly on good ideas.

“Beyond our own Conservative benches, there are immensely talented individuals with whom, looking ahead to the next Assembly elections, I stand ready to work with to deliver the change in government Wales needs.”

But how realistic is this?

“In 2007 they came very close to being in government,” Mr Awan-Scully said. “(Former Welsh Conservative leader) Nick Bourne’s years of patient and diligent work edging them into the centre ground and fostering better relationships very nearly worked.

“But even if at the next Assembly election they won the upper limit of what we would think would be plausible, what would only be 17 or 18 seats, and then they would have to have allies, and who would they be?

“Ukip has collapsed. The Lib Dems are never going to touch the Conservatives with a 100ft bargepole after last time

“And with Plaid Cymru - even in 2007 the rainbow coalition was unpopular.

“It seems about as likely as one of the Reverend Ian Paisley’s daughters becoming Pope.”

He added: “It must be quite dispiriting slogging along for years without making much progress.

“I can see why (Monmouth MP) David Davies and Alun Cairns decided to jump ship to Westminster.

“At least there there’s some possibility of being a minister.

“Unless they can find some way of breaking out of this strategic stranglehold the centre left have on the Assembly the best you can hope for as a Conservative is to influence the Assembly, do some good scrutiny work and be a good constituency AM.

“There are a number of Tory AMs who are quite talented people, some of the work they do on committees is very admirable. (South Wales Central AM) David Melding in particular has generated some good ideas.

“But there’s no obvious fresh Tory agenda for Wales .”

But Mr Davies said he remained convinced the party's work would pay off.

"We are working tirelessly to ensure we consolidate that position but we are working with our new ideas but also holding the Labour government to account," he said.

"But, let's face it, politicians don’t go into politics to be in opposition. You go into politics to be in government and implement your policies.

He added: "I lost my mother when I was 15 to cancer and I don’t lose a single hour or single minute of my day because I've seen how life gets ripped away from you.

"It falls to us who have the privilege of public office not to bicker among ourselves and squabble among ourselves but actually put on the table real solutions where people are finding challenges in their lives.

"If, as a political party, you can't put those solutions in place, if you cant shout from the rooftops about the positive and greatness of Wales in the UK, really, you shouldn’t be in public life.

"It’s a privilege to be in public life and every hour and every day, I never forget that and I along with my colleagues in the Assembly will continue to do that right up until the election in 2021 when we hope to be endorsed by the people of Wales."

But, all told, the idea of a Conservative-controlled Welsh Government, or a Conservative majority in Wales in Westminster, still seems to be as tall an order as it has ever been.

Mr Awan-Scully said: “Probably the best thing that could happen would be for the Conservatives to lose power in Westminster and for a Corbynite government to get into control and to get into some great difficulties. They could then take advantage of that in the Assembly.

“But we’re some way from that.”