Is it all over for 'the region' in the North?
In 1997, the idea of "the region" looked like the future.
, regional government offices were established and .
And of course to oversee this new devolved country, and solve the so-called "English problem".
Of course, all of that came to a grinding halt in 2004 when the North East people - supposedly the most enthusiastic - .
The unelected chamber lingered on in a living death for a couple of years , but regional decision-making was far from dead.
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Regional development agencies like or the took over the chambers' planning powers.
They were put in charge of implementing a planning blueprint for the region () which decided where was best for new jobs and even how many homes could be built in each area.
Council leaders collectively would be part of drawing up the future strategy with the development agencies but inidividual councils had to live with regional decisions.
The spending priorities for transport were also decided regionally, with a pot of money handed down from London.
And the justification for all this regional decision-making? A mix of both devolution and economies of scale.
Its supporters argued that this was handing power closer to the people, as many of the decisions taken regionally had been overseen in the past by Whitehall civil servants.
But they also argued that you needed a regional not local overview when deciding where to put investment and homes to avoid planning chaos and competition between different communities.
Now though .
The new coalition has already done away with regional ministers. (There's no equivalent of Nick Brown). And the regional parliamentary committees surely can't be long for the world.
It's possible some regional development agencies may survive - maybe only One North East - but in a much-reduced form and with a much-reduced budget.
Regional planning powers will go back to councils.
Communities not regions will decide how many new homes should be built, and where new investment should go.
Pots of regional transport money look likely to disappear.
Other regional organisations are likely to disappear, or at best be merged. But this is going to take some getting used to, particularly in the North East.
The political establishment and many in the business community do see the region as a cohesive whole.
Importantly for the coalition, that includes many Liberal Democrats who persuaded Vince Cable to change his party's policy towards regional development agencies in particular.
The question is will voters see it the same way?
I doubt many of them have a particular attachment to regional housing boards.
But Labour will want to portray the changes as an attack on a region which only supplies four MPs for the government benches.
It will then be up to the coalition to prove they're serious about the alternative to regional decision-making - the genuine devolution of powers to councils and communities.
We should find out more about the demise of the regions and what the alternative might be in next week's Queen's Speech.
I'm Richard Moss, the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳'s Political Editor for the North East and Cumbria. Welcome to my irreverent - but hopefully insightful - northern take on reporting politics for Look North and the Politics Show.
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