THIS SUMMER the television tube manufacturer, LG Philips, will close its factory in Durham and 761 workers will be made redundant. Yet the workers have not been graced with a joint visit from Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Patricia Hewitt has not swept up to the North East, looking misty-eyed at the prospect of the closure and promising a £100 million bridging loan to keep the plant open.

Why, the Durham workers may wonder, is the reaction to MG Rover’s problem so different? Yesterday, a world away from Longbridge, among the glass and marble palaces of Canary Wharf, Mr Blair, without a hint of irony, lauded new Labour as the “party of modern wealth-creation and prosperity”. Simultaneously, his Government was preparing to bung another £6.5 million in the direction of a far-from-modern business that is losing money at a frightening rate and whose contribution to wealth-creation has been to make four businessmen extraordinarily rich at the expense of the company.

That flow of funds will, it seems, continue — at least until the election is out of the way. Ostensibly, MG Rover is being kept on the Government’s life-support machine while efforts are made to secure a deal with the Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation. The chances of this being achieved seem as remote as Jim Morrison returning for a farewell concert at the Royal Albert Hall but the Government is determined that all MG Rover’s 6,000 workers should continue to be paid, even though not a car is being produced.

The advocate of wealth-creation who was speaking in Canary Wharf seemed well aware that it is not the role of governments to prop up ailing businesses. He referred to the challenges posed by China and India and their grasp of “accelerating technological change”. He marvelled at Volks- wagen’s plant in Shanghai, with its computer-controlled laser welders, which “is reckoned to be one of the three most advanced car assembly plants in the world”.

Longbridge, by contrast, is producing Rover models little changed in eight years, having been deprived of the massive investment needed to compete with the best in modern car manufacturing. The Midlands businessmen who, encouraged by Stephen Byers, the former Trade and Industry Secretary, bought the business for a tenner five years ago, might have been called “the Phoenix Four” then but it was clearly a dreadful misnomer. The only thing that has risen in that time is their bank balances, to the tune of more than £40 million. By contrast, the company that they bought appears more impoverished than outside analysts can comprehend: despite a near £500 million loan from BMW and a stock of ready-to-sell cars that were handed over initially, it is effectively penniless and had been notching up losses at the rate of £25 million a month.

What happened to the business, and its assets, in those five years will surely be the subject of a major investigation, perhaps under the auspices of the new Pensions Regulator, since MG Rover’s pension fund has the distinction of being the first customer of the new Pension Protection Fund. But an independent investigation of what inspired the Government to use public funds in prolonging the company’s existence might also be of interest.

The LG Philips workers sent a delegation to see the Prime Minister last month but they did not return to Durham bearing many millions of pounds. Instead, £500,000 is being provided by the Learning and Skills Council to fund some retraining and help the redundant workers to start their own businesses. The EU is even chipping in to help to meet the cost.

This is a sensible response, the sort of action that should be encouraged from a Government that professes to understand that its role should be that of “enabler” rather than meddler. No doubt some of those working at the television factory would have preferred to have had their jobs artificially propped up, but such help could only have been temporary, as it will inevitably be at Longbridge.

The same response should have greeted the collapse of MG Rover. It may be cynical to assume that it would have done, had it not been for electoral considerations, but it certainly looks that way. In close proximity to Longbridge there are many Labour-held seats in which the Government might fear the effects of a Rover-influenced revolt. For instance, Estelle Morris’s successor in Birmingham Yardley, and the Industry Minister, Jacqui Smith, in Redditch are defending majorities of around just 2,500.

However, in Durham City, home of the LG Philips plant, Labour has a whopping majority of 13,441, a number sufficient to give confidence to even the most nervous politician.

The Prime Minister, who made his pitch to the financial community yesterday on the basis that it was Labour that could be trusted with the British economy and relied upon to encourage a knowledge-based and innovative approach, would look aghast at any suggestion that an attempt was being made to buy votes in the West Midlands. Wide-eyed, he would do his “I’m Tone, you can trust me” routine. But the problem is, as the polls are showing, that we do not trust him.

This, after all, is a Government that knows that the postal voting system that it has encouraged is riddled with fraud. It has drafted legislation that would make it harder for the corruption to persist, but held back on passing it until after the election.

Would it really shrink from spending £25 million or more on saving a few Longbridge workers’ votes?