After a large turn-out to vote and an emphatic victory for the No campaign, Chris Lloyd looks at the reasons behind the rejection.

When the result came, moments after 1am yesterday, it was staggering in its size.

Although all but the most convinced of Yes campaigners reckonned No would win, not even the most persuaded member of the No team was expecting such an overwhelming landslide. How did this come to pass?

An excellent No campaign

No hit all the right buttons. They blasted into town with direct and simple messages and drowned out the gently optimistic mood music that Yes had been playing for years. Then they got a huge white elephant and squashed the Yes vote flat.

Whereas Yes toyed with people's hopes - the assembly, they said, would one day turn into something useful - No inflated with people's fears. There was no way a North-East assembly would be foolish enough to build a new headquarters, but No suggested it would. It took a JCB to Aykley Heads to symbolically start the digging and then it mentioned the Scottish experience, where a building estimated at £40m had actually cost £430m. Everybody immediately feared the worst.

These powerful and simple messages - some might add cynical - will be translated into the European Constitution referendum in 2006. Just say no to Brussels.

A not so excellent Yes campaign

Yes struggled to explain exactly what an assembly would do. It talked of a vision, of people coming together to solve their ills, of an assembly sitting atop the region, pulling the strings and working out strategies.

But people wanted to know precisely what it would do for their day-to-day lives, what return they'd get for their 5p-a-week council tax (which, incidentally, they feared would rocket exponentially).

Yes couldn't tell them. In 1997, Labour won the General Election with five simple pledges that it was impossible to vote against. Yes couldn't even find one concrete improvement - beyond a bus pass for the elderly - that an assembly would make. Then, following The Northern Echo's Mori poll that put it way behind No, it turned personal in an attempt to expose its opponents links to the Tories - perhaps a legitimate tactic, but labelling them "rather arrogant Southern toffs" wasn't the cleverest means of attack.

A far from excellent package of proposals

Yes, though, was trying to sell something that even the Government itself didn't seem to believe in.

The package was so weak that ministers from Tony Blair and Gordon Brown down couldn't precisely say what an assembly would do.

In fact, the package felt as if it had been put together as a half-hearted sop to please John Prescott, who had been campaigning passionately and sincerely for regional devolution for 25 years.

The public sensed the inherent weaknesses in the proposal, and the Government's reluctance to give it anything meaty, and cruelly closed in for the kill.

A feeling that no politician can ever have an excellent idea

"There is a larger message here and, in my view, the result says something about the state of politics and parties in the UK," said John Tomaney, leader of the Yes campaign, in his speech after the result was announced.

People are cynical about politicians. From their expenses to their spin and their non-existent weapons of mass destruction. Does anyone believe that a politician could improve their lives?

No tapped into this. "No more politicians," it said. Yet Yes wanted a new grouping of politicians, and the further behind in the polls it fell, the more current politicians it threw at the region to promise that the new politicians would clear up the mess made by old politicians. And all along, the public didn't trust a word that the politicians said.

So where now?

The danger for the North-East is that the Government believes that the region has had its chance, has rejected its offer and so is happy with the status quo.

Indeed, it is difficult to see what new initiative a government could offer. Afterall, no government is going to reform the Barnett formula, no government is going to think about regional democracy, and only a very brave government would return to powerful, local mayors. After the unpredictable experiences of Middlesbrough, Hartlepool and North Tyneside, it would be like returning to an already-lit firework: it could blow up in your face at any moment - a man in a monkey suit, indeed.

But Labour does need to produce a response for its heartland. The voters in the North-East have turned out in goodly numbers to give it a thoroughly unpleasant kicking. As they did in those mayoral elections. As they did in the European elections. As they did when they installed Liberal Democrat councils in Durham and Newcastle.

With Michael Howard admitting that his Conservatives are likely to win in the region, the LibDems must be looking with some hope towards next year's election.