Nominations closed yesterday for the region's first directly-elected mayorsPolitical Editor Chris Lloyd sets the scene, analyses The Northern Echo's exclusive poll and looks at the most controversial contest of Middlesbrough.

THE old adage that even a monkey wearing a Labour rosette would be elected in the dyed-in-the-wool heartland of the North-East will be severely examined in all three of the region's council areas which are electing mayors on May 2.

There will be no walk-overs, and in Hartlepool, a monkey may even win - although he will be wearing the blue-and-white rosette of the local football team of which he is mascot.

H'Angus notwithstanding, Hartlepool looks to be Labour's safest bet as the campaign gets formally under way today.

The local Labour group has had a traumatic five years, running through three leaders and culminating in May 2000 with the loss of the council for the first time in decades. It won 37 per cent of the vote to the LibDems' 38, and is now in opposition to a LibDem/Conservative alliance.

Labour's candidate will be up against the new LibDem council leader Arthur Preece who says: "Much of my 22 months in office has been spent finding ways to pay off debts and clear up liabilities left by 22 years of Labour control."

This may not seem much of a safe bet, but since May 2000 Labour has regained a council seat and retained its MP - troubled Peter Mandelson winning a 14,500 majority last June.

And, uniquely, Labour has chosen a candidate from outside the political sphere. Part of the idea behind mayors was that they would attract candidates who were not the usual councillors, and Labour will be hoping that businessman Leo Gillen is sufficiently detached from the local group to be electable.

North Tyneside should be a safe Labour bet as the council covers the constituencies of two Labour MPs - Stephen Byers and Alan Campbell.

But the council make up is not so clear: Labour holds 34 of the 60 seats and at the last local election won 21,000 votes to its opponents' 20,000.

In addition, in selecting its candidate Eddie Darke, the local Labour group has split itself, with council leader Rita Stringfellow only narrowly losing out.

Finally, there is Middlesbrough. Labour has 41 of the 53 seats on the council and the local MP, Stuart Bell, receives 70 per cent of the vote in General Elections - surely a shoe-in in a town where even the football team wears red.

But, no. Middlesbrough is going to be the most interesting - and possibly entertaining - of any of the mayoral elections.

A good gauge of political disarray is to look at the quantity and quality of opponents.

In 1997, the Tory sleazemeister Neil Hamilton had to contend with Martin Bell; in 2001 Mr Mandelson, the epitome of Labour's difficulties, took on any number of malcontents. In 2002, the ruling Middlesbrough Labour Party is up against a charity worker, a nightclub owner and, of course, an ex-copper.

For those unacquainted with the Ray Mallon story, there isn't time between now and polling day to fill in the whole details. Suffice to say, he was a successful policeman who courted the media and was suspended. Four-and-half-years and anything up to £8m on, he pleaded guilty to serious disciplinary offences which he now denies.

Middlesbrough's Labour leadership has allied itself to the police's bid to winkle out corruption - and Mr Mallon. So intent is it on getting its message across that Mr Bell has taken out a £6,500 broadsheet advert in the local newspaper to print every damning word of his Parliamentary speech which was designed to destroy Mr Mallon.

But, with its protection from the libel laws, it only enhanced the perception that Mr Mallon is the small guy daring to take on the establishment.

This anti-Mallon approach is not universally popular within the local party. Some members wanted Mr Mallon to be the party's mayoral candidate; some members are, treasonably, working for Mr Mallon's independent campaign.

It has, though, raised the stakes of this mayoral election to an extraordinary level: should Mr Mallon win, a vote of no confidence will have been delivered in the chief constable, the local MP and the leader of the council.

The idea of directly-elected mayors was to inspire interest in, and debate about, local affairs.

Nowhere is this happening more than in the Labour heartland of the North-East with the scrap in Middlesbrough likely to gain the most national interest of all the seven mayoral elections in the country.

No surprise that Mallon Leads.

IT is no surprise that Ray Mallon has such a lead in The Northern Echo's poll.

The people of Middlesbrough voted for a directly-elected mayor last year by an overwhelming majority - the biggest in the country - and this was almost entirely because the charismatic ex-police officer had said he wanted the job.

The big imponderable was the effect of his decision in February to plead guilty to 14 disciplinary charges brought against him by Cleveland Police. Mr Mallon has always maintained his innocence and said guilty pleas were the only way he could escape Operation Lancet and be free to stand as mayor.

The poll shows that Mr Mallon still has a very considerable core support - and, anecdotally, he is particularly popular with the elderly. Yet 43 per cent are unsure which way to vote and it would appear that, while freeing him to stand, the guilty pleas have made some waver.

This will give Labour some hope as it battles to gain voter-recognition for its candidate, Sylvia Connolly. She was four per cent ahead of Bernie Slaven, the former Middlesbrough footballer, who has decided not to stand.

Directly-elected mayors aim to reinvigorate local government and our poll shows that in Middlesbrough the idea is catching on. Nearly 52 per cent said they would be voting, whereas council election turnout has been down to 20 per cent.

The Northern Echo's poll is unscientific, but we phoned more than 1,000 Middlesbrough people at random over the past four days.

We tried a similar exercise at the start of the 2001 General Election campaign with surprisingly accurate results.

We interviewed more than 2,000 people in four constituencies and found a Labour lead of 13 per cent - Labour won by 12 per cent.

We correctly predicted that Peter Mandelson, then deeply troubled, would get a thumping victory in Hartlepool, as he did. However, we were wrong in Middlesbrough East - a notoriously difficult seat to predict - where our poll suggested Labour lagging by one per cent, whereas Ashok Kumar eventually won by a steepling 21 per cent.