TONY Blair was on fine North-East form yesterday with his latest pledge to tackle the problems of his home region.

The commitment may not have been the main point of his speech in Newcastle, but let's not quibble.

Funny, though, how the MP for Sedgefield struggles to speak from the heart about the region which sent him to Westminster. At Prime Minister's Questions in the Commons this week, Jarrow MP Stephen Hepburn set up him nicely with a question expressing outrage at the fuel protestors' plans for a latter-day Jarrow March.

It was an open goal. How dare the fuel mob appropriate the name of that harrowing crusade against destitution and poverty unimaginable today, was the tenor of Mr Hepburn's question.

It brought forth the following righteous outburst from Mr Blair. "The circumstances of the Jarrow March were completely different," said the PM, before launching into a general attack on the fuel protestors.

TONY'S limp response was all the more curious as it was all a bit of a set-up job in the first place, or so I hear.

Apparently, Alastair Campbell, the Number 10 spin-doctor in chief, had a quiet word with Stephen Hepburn to make sure he lobbed the question in at Prime Minister's Questions.

Presumably, Mr Campbell told his boss that the Jarrow query would be coming.

But here's one reason why our Tone fell short on the North-East fraternal fervour front. Mr Hepburn just had to go and mention the 1980s miners' strike and where were all the petrol demonstrators when the miners were getting it in the neck?

And that, from Mr Blair's Middle England point of view, was probably pressing one Old Labour tribal button too many.

NO lack of North-East passion from another Labour MP I'd love to name but who has sworn me to discretion.

The said MP is a firebrand of a politician, not afraid to embarrass his own government over its failures in the region. But with a General Election a-coming, the New Labour nobblers have swung into action.

The said MP is livid that he's got a letter from a North-East union big-wig warning him to stop knocking the Government.

The MP was ''keeping my powder dry'' this week but if I know this chap, he'll be opening both barrels and naming names in a matter of days.

POOR old Giles Radice was one of those MPs stuck in an airless New York lift for half an hour last week.

As chairman of the Treasury committee which was detained in such an undignified manner, I expect the Durham North MP must have given the order to use some committee papers to prise the doors open and get some air in.

Anyway, the rumour-mills took rapid advantage of Mr Radice's absence in the States to revive the story that Giles will quit the Commons and ascend to the Lords just before the election.

That'd conveniently mean the selection process would be taken out of the Durham North constituency members' hands and let Labour HQ in London parachute in a Blairite favourite.

My, what imaginations some people have.

SHOULD be an interesting contest this afternoon at the Cellnet Riverside. No, not the one between Middlesbrough and Arsenal. I mean the political one among the spectators.

Tory leader William Hague, who doubles as MP for Richmond in North Yorkshire, will be in attendance. But so, in the same box, may be Middlesbrough Labour MP Stuart Bell. I do hope the ref's firm with them from the start or there'll be a few crunching tackles