THE “Right Lines” campaign being driven by this newspaper is aimed at uniting the North-East behind demands for a fair deal on rail services.

The region is suffering from years of under-investment in its railways, and business leaders, council chiefs and local MPs have backed our calls for a more enlightened approach.

The time to make the case for the region is now because the Northern Rail and TransPennine franchises are up for grabs.

These are lucrative contracts and the bidders should be made to deliver value for money, ambitious solutions to the north’s railway failings.

Imagine our disappointment, therefore, to hear the response from Labour’s transport spokeswoman, Mary Creagh, when we questioned her about her party’s view on controversial Government plans to hike ticket prices on northern routes and renege on a promise to replace the 30-year-old Pacer trains.

Did the opposition transport spokesperson – a northern MP herself – come out fighting and vow to at least challenge those plans? Did she argue that northern rail services would be in better under a Labour government?

No, she didn’t. Instead, she replied in the most wishy-washy, defeatist way that the Government plans might be impossible to overturn and that our questioning wasn’t fair because she didn’t have the benefit of civil service advice on the matter.

Here we are, a few months from the most unpredictable general election in years, with Ed Miliband’s Labour Party failing to make an impact even in traditional heartlands.

Is it really too much to expect Labour Party spokespeople to have their own opinions by now?

We’ll keep banging the drum for the north – and hope the Labour Party catches up some where down the line.