THERE was something very real, something raw, at the Say No to the EU rally in Gateshead on Monday night.

It wasn't just that 1,300 people had come, seen and applauded in all the right places. And it wasn't just the cult of Nigel Farage's personality. After all, the North-East's own UKIP member of the European Parliament, Jonathan Arnott got nearly as many cheers as his boss.

Instead there was the sense of enthusiasm for a political idea.

The audience did not need prompting to applaud and shout as sometimes happens at the big, stage-managed political party set-pieces. And there were no gangs of PR people organising pretty pictures for the telly, or nurses and soldiers used as some political leader's backdrop.

In fact it was reminiscent of other big, grassroots, political rallies in the region just a couple of months ago: the Corbyn meetings ahead of the Labour Party elections.

No doubt those two political tribes think themselves very different. Farage gave Corbyn a pasting. "Corbyn," he said, pausing for the what he knew would be a big laugh, "Now there's a thought..."

They are very different people. The Corbynistas who packed Middlesbrough Town Hall and the Tyne Theatre not long ago were on average younger, hipper and and far more likely to be wearing obscure Pink Floyd T-shirts. The Farage crowd were more middle class, more male and more middle aged - though far younger than you may expect - and a fair number were wearing ties.

And yet, with both tribes there was a sense of freedom from the dead hand of managed politics.

Both political gangs would probably have agreed on more than they think. Some of the biggest cheers were for Redcar's steelworkers.

"My town has died today," said Ukip Redcar councillor Steve Turner to massive cheers. State intervention, traditionally a left-wing impulse, was strongly advocated, although not by Farage himself.

But then Farage hit his people with his sure-fire crowd-pleasers they had come for. The danger of migration and ISIS "flooding" the continent with Jihadists, Germany being too powerful, European law "supreme" over Britain's.

"Is this your flag," Farage asks, pointing to an EU flag. "Noooo," comes the answer. "Is this?" he says, pointing at the Union Flag. Huge cheers.

This was politics real, raw and basic.