JOHN PRESCOTT’S cherished dream of English devolution was shattered last night when voters overwhelmingly rejected an elected assembly for the North East.

The Deputy Prime Minister, was shocked and humiliated when voters threw out his proposals for a directly elected regional assembly in yesterday’s referendum by 78 per cent, with only 22 per cent in favour.

The returning officer announced that a “no” vote had been polled by 696,519 people, whereas only 197,310 voted “yes”.

Bernard Jenkin, shadow Minister for the Regions last night called on the Government to scrap its programme for regional government. “This is an astonishing rejection of the Government’s plans. It must herald the death of Labour’s bogus regional agenda. We call on Mr Prescott to scrap all plans for regional assemblies,” he said.

The scale of the defeat, which follows a high turnout of nearly 48 per cent, surprised even the North East Says No group which has run an aggressive but effective campaign over the last month.

Despite a huge push by the Labour Party over the last 48 hours to get out their vote, the higher turn out in the end favoured the “no” camp, which was backed by the Tories and UKIP.

Voters in the rural areas of Northumberland and cities including Newcastle upon Tyne were persuaded by the “no” camp that the assembly would have no powers and would put up council tax. All 23 districts in the region, which stretches from Darlington in the south to Berwick-upon-Tweed in the north, voted against the assembly. Sedgefield district, Tony Blair’s constituency, rejected the plan by 23,583 votes to 9,040.

The result means that Mr Prescott’s plan for regional government is in tatters. The proposed referendums in the North West and Yorkshire and the Humber are now likely to be abandoned altogether because the North East was always the region most likely to support the idea. The Government is now expected to tear up its twelve-year-old plan to create eight or nine regional assemblies in England to mirror devolution in Scotland and Wales.

The Prime Minister and most of his Cabinet colleagues were never enthusiastic about ceding powers to regional government and will now be under pressure to come up with more popular reforms to devolve decision making.

The Yes 4 The North East campaign conceded defeat even before the results were announced in Sunderland.

“We’ve failed to put across what the advantages of a regional assembly would be,” said Ross Forbes, the campaign director.

“We were trying to sell a vision of how things could be, but we were facing an aggressively negative campaign which had a simple message about more council tax and more politicians.”

Ray Mallon, the former policeman turned Mayor of Middlesbrough and a strong supporter of the “yes” campaign, admitted that it had been a disappointing night.

“It was a hard-fought campaign but the public have spoken and we have to abide by that decision. Everybody now has to do everything they can to bring the North East together so that we speak with one voice,” he said.

John Elliott, a businessman who is chairman of the “no” camp said: “We haven’t really achieved anything, but at least we’ve stopped things from going backwards. We haven’t made the North East a better place, but at least it’s not going to be worse.”

James Frayne, the campaign director for North East Says No, said that an overwhelming victory had been achieved in the face of a concerted effort by Labour to salvage a “yes” vote.

“We were facing the Labour Party machine at full pitch in its own patch. The Labour establishment in the North East was determined to save face but it looks as though they have failed emphatically.”

Mr Frayne, who was recruited to the “no” campaign from a new Eurosceptic think tank in London, has mounted an effective campaign with a simple negative message — that the assembly would mean more politicians, more bureaucrats and would cost the taxpayer more.

He played on fears by warning of higher council tax and an expensive new assembly building similar to that of the new Scottish Parliament.

The “yes” camp admitted last night that it had failed to counter the message effectively, partly because the proposed assembly only had limited powers. Recriminations began within both Labour and the “yes” camp with accusations that the Goverment had lulled itself into a false sense of security.

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