TWO weeks ago, I wrote about the great economic divide opening up between Labour and the Conservatives – and now I have found another chasm just as wide.

Of course, any clash over who should have the power to make key decisions for the North-East and Yorkshire is unlikely to make as many headlines in next year’s General Election fight. However, this debate – with the dry title of “the future of regional policy”

at a seminar I attended last week – should matter almost as much.

In the red corner stood Barbara Follett, a local government minister, who issued a passionate defence of the regional structures Labour has set up to spread wealth away from London – One North East and Yorkshire Forward regional development agencies (RDAs), of course, plus the “Regional Economic Councils”, which bring together ministers, businesses, trade unions and the RDAs to fight the economic crash.

In the blue corner was our very own Lord Bates, the former Langbaurgh MP Michael Bates, now Conservative deputy chairman, who insisted – just as passionately – that regionalism is fit only for the bonfire.

The Tory vision is to axe the RDAs and other quangos, handing town halls responsibility for economic development, planning, housing, transport, health and tourism.

To ensure local councils are properly answerable to voters, they will be run by executive mayors, be forced to publish all spending decisions and be free to hike taxes – if they win a referendum.

To the Tories, a decade of regionalism has failed our region – just as, to Labour, it is obvious town halls lack the muscle to act alone and are prey to an isolated “silo mentality”.

So which vision is stronger? Well, it is clear, following the death of Labour’s big idea of an elected North-East Assembly, that its structures lack all democratic accountability.

The plan for committees of MPs to scrutinise regional quangos has flopped – which is worrying when the RDAs will become even more powerful with the scrapping next year of the unelected assemblies.

Yet, anyone who remembers the crushing of local government under Margaret Thatcher will be hugely sceptical about a new dawn under David Cameron. His plans – itemised spending, referenda to veto big plans – seem designed to cramp town halls, rather than restore their long-lost powers.

And the idea that council-led “local enterprise boards” will somehow bring investment and jobs to the North, despite lacking the powers and resources of the RDAs, is surely a fantasy?

The hole in Lord Bates’ argument was laid bare by his assertion that strong government mattered less in the new digital age of working online from anywhere in the world.

Sadly, it came just days after the Tories vowed to axe the 50p monthly “super-broadband tax” without which people in rural parts of the region will continue to suffer internet freezes.

Democratic, but weak – or autocratic, but stronger. That appears to be the choice from where I sit.

LORD Bates stood in for business spokesman Ken Clarke – while revealing he often replaces Richmond MP William Hague at speaking events, adding: “So I’m used to going into a room to find people disappointed.”

The peer didn’t reveal if he ever receives the Shadow Foreign Secretary’s usual afterdinner entertainment fee – a cool £15,000.