AS predicted, Ray Mallon has had to rule himself out of the scramble to replace Peter Mandelson as MP for Hartlepool.

He is right to do so because he would have been savaged for being an opportunist who jumped ship from the post of elected Mayor of Middlesbrough.

That said, we are sure that Mr Mallon is torn apart by having to pass up such an enticing opportunity.

Make no mistake about it - Mr Mallon would love to be Labour's official candidate in Hartlepool. Labour would love to have him. And he would win at a canter.

It will gnaw away at him that he cannot be the high-profile successor to Peter Mandelson that Hartlepool feels it needs.

But he has made a public commitment to serve Middlesbrough. He was elected to do so and he cannot throw away the trust invested in him.

What the Hartlepool vacancy has done is flush out Mr Mallon's real political ambitions.

We now know a number of things about him: that he wants to be an MP; that he wants to be on the Labour benches; and he only wants to serve Middlesbrough or Hartlepool.

Hartlepool is now out of the equation, and Sir Stuart Bell has been reselected to stand for Middlesbrough at the next General Election.

Mr Mallon's bid for Westminster is therefore likely to have to wait until 2010. A week is a long time in politics, so he will have done extraordinarily well for his star to still be in the ascendancy come the turn of the decade.

No wonder he has found it so hard to turn down Hartlepool.