So farewell, levelling up. This Government struggled to explain what this flagship policy meant in practice which allowed them to adapt it to suit their political priorities. And as the recent funding round confirmed the North East is not their priority. As I have written before, eventually the Government would have to choose between Red Wall seats mainly in the North and southern Blue Wall seats. They have now made that choice.

In a letter to me from Michael Gove he claims that levelling up would empower local leaders to regenerate their town centres. He then confirmed that the North Shields bid has been rejected. Not because of shortcomings with the bid – on the contrary he described bids as high quality – but saying there were just too many to choose. Hardly surprising if the Government encouraged hundreds of hours and thousands of pounds spent by council officers and consultants developing applications for what was a short term, partisan bidding competition.

Ministers stress they played only a limited role in decision making which simply confirms suspicions that the process was skewed from the start. Indeed the Public Accounts Committee criticised allocations saying the Government changed the rules as the process went along.

A lack of transparency, failure to follow up with the funding for earlier bids and raising expectations only to dash them have been the undoing of levelling up. We need a transfer of decision making and resources outside of Westminster to allow decision making closer to where it has affect empowering communities and regions to take back control.