YESTERDAY'S manifesto launch gave new impetus to the Liberal Democrat campaign in the North-East, which has been hopefully looking at signs of support in council elections to show that the party is gaining ground.

"People were actually stopping their cars and taking a copy of the manifesto from me once they had seen it on TV," said Suzanne Walker, LibDem candidate in Stockton South.

"It is all there and properly costed, which is important, because people don't want false promises."

Although opinion polls consistently put the LibDems on 13 per cent, local activists say they are making headway on councils. The most dramatic in the North-East was in Hartlepool, where they took 38 per cent of the vote, to Labour's 37 per cent, in May last year.

Nigel Boddy, the challenger to Peter Mandelson, said: "I was particularly pleased with the manifesto's schools guarantee to cut class sizes to a maximum average in primary schools of 25, which will be guaranteed by funding 12,500 extra primary teachers. We will also recruit 5,000 extra secondary teachers.

"We must begin to spend as much on education in England as is spent in Scotland and by other nations on the continent."

The LibDems' success in Hartlepool was partly due to divisions within the Labour group. To prevent supporters defecting again, Mr Mandelson's tactic this time appears to be to talk up the Tory threat, creating a stark choice in which there is little place for the LibDems.

The party has also made strides in Redcar and Cleveland, where it now has 11 councillors.

Candidate Stan Wilson welcomed the format of the manifesto.

"It's unique," he said. "The idea of putting it in a newspaper form, so that copies are cheap to get out to all our supporters, is one other parties will be copying next year."

In Bishop Auckland, County Durham, Chris Foote Wood has to overturn Derek Foster's 25,000 majority.

He too points to council success as last May, for the first time, LibDems took the Bishop Auckland county council seat - although they lost it soon afterwards when the councillor turned independent.

"But the vote was for us," he said. "In my leaflets, I am pleading for tactical voting. I know there are a lot of disillusioned Labour voters, but the Tories will never win Bishop Auckland so voting for them will help Labour keep the seat."