AS the General Election gets underway, the most striking aspect of the likely result on May 5 is that what happens here in the North-East and North Yorkshire doesn't really matter in the broader scheme of things.

We don't mean that our votes don't count. They do, of course. But it is a fact that in terms of choosing the next Government the battlefields lie elsewhere, the South of England in fact.

Politics in this part of the world has become ever more polarised over the past 20 years. Successive elections have seen Labour and Tory seats become safer and safer and there are few truly marginal seats either. The days when Darlington, Stockton South and Middlesbrough South and Cleveland East - or Langbaurgh as was - were critical bell-weather constituencies are long gone.

The best hope of an upset is in Harrogate where the Conservatives hope to reclaim a seat they believe is naturally theirs from the Liberal Democrats.

Last year's regional assembly vote, remarkable as it was, doesn't count in weighing up prospects now. While Labour's traditional North-East supporters were not prepared to tow the party line over John Prescott's flawed idea, they are not disaffected enough to throw the Blair-Brown baby out with the bathwater.

Coverage of the election in the D&S will reflect these local political realities. By restricting that coverage to summaries of the salient points we will endeavour to bring readers the information they need to know before they cast their vote, rather than the mountain of political flim-flam which we could, if minded, report. We will leave that to the party machines to disseminate.

To make the D&S a politics-free zone is perhaps an abrogation of our responsibility to provide information readers need to exercise their democratic right. But very tempting nevertheless.