LORD Mandelson, carer of our Prime Minister, commonly acknowledged as the most influential figure in British politics today, is confident the North-East will back labour at the General Election.

He blames unemployment for damaging the party in its heartlands and argues that northerners will return to the fold when confronted with the “fundamental divide’’ between Labour and the Conservatives.

What he is really saying is that the North can be relied on to vote Labour no matter what. For, as he surely knows, the disillusion with New Labour runs far deeper than the impact of even the most savage economic blow.

Indeed, at one time lost jobs strengthened support for Labour. It did so because people recognised in their MPs a genuine concern for their plight. Many MPs had risen from the grassroots and known hard times themselves. They were therefore trusted above the candidates of other parties.

The Blair years changed all that. Today there is a feeling that most Labour MPs are out of touch with their constituents. Perhaps even that they were never in touch. There is doubt that they have real feeling for workingclass people at all.

But Lord Mandelson is right. When push comes to shove, when the voting pencil is poised, the North-East voter’s cross will still be marked alongside the Labour candidate – be he or she fish, flesh or fowl.

By allowing itself to be taken for granted the region gets what it deserves – career MPs who go their merry, richly-funded way, some ambitious for higher office, others content to paddle along, few with genuine passion and wholehearted commitment to the communities they are meant to serve.

DOES Tony Blair care about the bedrock of Labour voters? Never to be forgotten is the snub he delivered year after year to Durham’s mining communities by his failure to attend the Miners’ Gala, just up the road from his constituency home.

There’s a strong echo of that in his absence this week from the Labour Party’s conference. An aide explained that he “”has Middle East and Faith Foundation commitments and will be out of the country.’’ In plainer words, as far away as possible.

But it’s hard not to believe that Mr Blair’s unspecified commitments could not have been fitted around a conference appearance.

You might conclude that Mr Blair’s enthusiasm for the party he led in government is no greater than for the miners without whose support, for more than a century,that party would probably never have come to power.

What is close to his heart? I predict that Mr Blair, a Catholic convert,will not be out of the country when Pope Benedict visits Britain.

MEANWHILE. . . whose barmy idea was it to hold a series of Regional Grand Committees, composed of MPs, across Britain? Recognisably from the same stable as the regionalised Cabinet meetings, the crackpot gimmick bears all the hallmarks of New Labour.

As the Echo’s report made clear, the inaugural Grand Committee, held in Middlesbrough as the North-East venue, was a pointless, poorly-attended talking shop.

Nor would confidence in the region be inspired by its setting – Middlesbrough’s Victorian council chamber, dominated by a threadbare Union Jack and a clock which, according to the Echo, stopped years ago.

Middlesbrough’s motto is Moving Forward.

Not on this evidence.