It has been a long and winding road from 1997, when a regional assembly was first mooted, to the North-East referendum. Political Editor Chris Lloyd looks at some of the milestones, high points and unexpected turns along the way.

1997

Labour's manifesto for what proved to be its historic landslide victory included a pledge to devolve power to the provinces and regions of the United Kingdom.

As a Government, it began by creating regional development agencies - in the North-East called One NorthEast and in Yorkshire called Yorkshire Forward - overseen by a quango confusingly called the North-East Assembly.

It also held referendums in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland which all agreed, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, to have their own assemblies, with varying degrees of powers.

In 2000, the provinces were followed by London which got its own 25-member authority complete with Ken Livingstone as mayor.

Meanwhile, in the North-East, two different groupings were campaigning for the region to have its own voice: the Campaign for a North-East Assembly, which featured the then Bishop of Durham Michael Turnbull, and the North-East Constitutional Convention.

2002

Tony Blair, the Prime Minister and North-East MP, favoured the concept of directly-elected mayors and so Middlesbrough, Hartlepool and North Tyneside were allowed to experiment. They elected an independent ex-policeman, a monkey-man and a Tory, and the experiment was dropped.

In May 2002, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister issued a White Paper entitled Your Region, Your Choice.

It was the first Government statement on elected regional government since a Green Paper in 1976, and it was a personal triumph for Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott. He had won over other sceptical members of the Cabinet to a concept he had been championing since the early 1980s.

2003

Mr Prescott carries out "soundings" among the eight English regions. Three express an interest in pushing ahead with a referendum to find out if they want assemblies as modelled by the White Paper. Those regions are the North-East, the North-West and Yorkshire and the Humber. Mr Prescott says it will be the "Great North Vote", and he launches an information campaign called "Your Say".

JULY 2004

Your Say takes to the TV screens backed by the Beatles' Hello Goodbye ("I say yes, you say no...") and the referendum date is set. North-East Says No is formed under the chairmanship of Bishop Auckland businessman John Elliott.

It shares some ground with Neil Herron's North-East No campaign which had for two years been acting as opposition to the well-established Yes groups.

On July 22, a Draft Regional Assemblies Bill is published belatedly setting out what powers an assembly might have. The Bill is overshadowed as the referendums in the North-West and Yorkshire are postponed.

Ostensibly, it is because of problems with the postal voting system (the North-East, the Government argues, has a longer history than elsewhere of trouble-free postal voting), but many see it as a shameless piece of politicking as the polls suggest that the North-East is the only referendum the Government stands a chance of winning.

September 10

The final episode in the Your Say campaign is played out - although the legal debate about a mistake in a leaflet distributed to all 1.2 million homes in the North-East will rumble on. Now the politics replaces the information. At the Transporter Bridge, in Middlesbrough, Mr Blair admits to The Northern Echo that he was sceptical about regional government but had been won over by seeing it in action in the provinces.

September 14

The Electoral Commission announces that Mr Elliott's North-East Says No will be the official campaign group against the assembly ahead of Mr Herron's group and the British National Party. Mr Elliott's group now features many Conservative supporters. It also has the backing of the UK Independence Party (Ukip). Professor John Tomaney, of Newcastle University, will lead the Yes group, backed by Labour, the LibDems and the unions.

September 15

Ray Mallon, Mayor of Middlesbrough, backs "Yes" because the North-East needs strong leadership. Sir John Hall, of MetroCentre and Newcastle United fame, is also a Yes ambassador.

September 17

82 per cent of the North-East Region of the Institute of Directors are anti-assembly, a poll of fewer than 70 people reveals. Yes claims its support runs at two-to-one among the public - although there are a lot of undecideds.

September 18

An argument over the use of logos reveals the extent of the rivalry between local councils squabbling for survival. Under regional goverment, all authorities must be unitary. In Durham, the referendum gives the choice between a county council or three smaller unitary councils. Northumberland faces a similar dilemma.

September 24

A small Mori poll has 39 per cent saying Yes and 22 No. Yes says reorganisation of local government will mean at least 500 fewer politicians; No unveils its central slogan: "Politicians Talk, We Pay."

September 26

74 per cent of 900 members of the North-East Chamber of Commerce are anti-assembly. 67 per cent are in favour of a single, large county council. The assembly campaign is overshadowed by Hartlepool's bitter by-election battle.

October 1

The Northern Echo reveals the Government is on the verge of agreeing with the LibDems that an assembly should get greater powers over transport than previously imagined.

October 4

No claims an assembly would create "a culture of high salaries, expenses and spin". Yes says it would only cost the average council taxpayer 5p-a-week.

Opera singer Suzannah Clarke appears beside the Bottle of Notes in Middlesbrough as she steps up her bid to become the most photographed personality of the campaign.

October 5

The temperature rises. No burns £1.25m in fake bank-notes to show what it believes would be the cost of the assembly - figures Sir John Hall dismisses as "guesswork and myth". Mr Prescott says the North-East will "blaze a trail" but is harangued in Durham by students wanting more parking spaces and by pro-hunters.

October 7

No continues on the offensive, claiming an assembly would create "an army of bureaucrats".

October 11

Yes says there are existing buildings in Durham City that would cheaply fit the bill as a home for an assembly.

October 12

No makes its first foray into Teesside and at the Transporter Bridge unveils its 15ft inflatable white elephant - which becomes the most enduring image of the campaign. No spokesman Graham Robb says: "The white elephant is a symbol for the regional assembly. It's unwieldy, cumbersome and serves no useful purpose at all and is full of hot air."

In Newcastle, Chancellor Gordon Brown presents the best speech of the campaign, saying that without regional government "balanced economic growth becomes impossible as we can see in our own country where we have unemployment, emigration and unused resources in one part of the country and congestion and overcrowding and huge inflationary pressures in the other."

October 15

Problems with the postal ballot emerge. Voters in Darlington have been sent envelopes marked World Cancer Research Fund; leaflets about how to obtain a proxy vote are distributed hours before the deadline. Hundreds of people failed to receive ballot packs, but anti-campaigner Neil Herron got four.

October 16

An assembly would save between £4.2m and £12.4m a year, says Local Government Minister Nick Raynsford, because of the council reorganisation. Alan Milburn introduces a series of faceless bureaucrats in Darlington's Market Place to show who currently makes decisions, but Ray Mallon makes "an astonishing admission" that he hasn't read the draft Bill.

October 18

As the first ballot papers are delivered, an exclusive Mori poll for The Northern Echo shows that No has opened up a seven per cent lead over Yes. Among those certain to vote, there is a staggering 23 per cent advantage for No.

But still the Echo urges a Yes vote: "If we have faith in the North-East, pride in the North-East and confidence in the North-East, then we have to support an assembly which, for all its faults, can mark the beginning of the road to greater self-determination for the North-East."

The campaign descends into farce on Palace Green with an 8ft rat called Shameless pursuing the elephant. Yes says "rat" is for Rather Arrogant Toff Southerners.

October 19

No turns up at Aykley Heads in Durham with a JCB, dumper truck and builders to begin work on the assembly building it says is "inevitable". Yes vehemently denies the claim.

October 20

AN official No information phone line turns out to be a Ukip call centre in Preston, which is telling callers that an assembly would be in a purpose-built building in the hamlet of Littlethorpe, near Easington, North Yorkshire - a palpable nonsense.

October 22

A Yes blitz: Sports Minister Richard Caborn is in Chester-le-Street; Welsh leader Rhodri Morgan is in Sunderland and Health Minister John Reid is in Newcastle.

Top billing is in Stockton where Tony Blair and LibDem leader Charles Kennedy share a platform to promote a Yes vote. Given the personal antipathy between the leaders over Iraq, it is an extraordinary sight.

October 25

Ken Livingstone arrives in Newcastle to urge the North-East to seize control from London, and Gordon Brown is back to condemn the "London Tories" running the No campaign. No, though, has converted the Senior Citizens Party to its cause.

October 26

Yes unveils "Tory Boy", a suited, braying caricature wearing a Michael Howard mask, which apparently shows how No is being run by southern Tories.

October 27

The low point. No exposes Yes rat as a southern public schoolboy and Ray Mallon turns up in Durham to shout at the No office. "Children, children, purlease..." says The Northern Echo.

October 31

No's figures show the referendum has cost £10.5m.

November 2

Mr Prescott finishes his campaign. "I know it's neck-and-neck, but what is certain is that every vote does count and those who haven't should get out and vote," he tells the Echo.

It's all over bar the counting...

November 4

The people of the North-East deliver a devastating No vote on the idea of a regional assembly.

It represents a huge embarrassment for the Government and kills off the prospect of regional government referendums in Yorkshire and the North-West.

Sir John Hall sums up the mood of the defeated Yes campaign by saying: "It's very difficult to sell a dream."