The North East England devolution referendum, held on 4 November 2004, saw voters reject the Labour government’s plan to establish an elected regional assembly with limited political powers devolved from the UK parliament. The defeat effectively marked the end of the Blair government’s policy to extend regional devolution across England.

The 2004 vote is sometimes referred to as the “forgotten referendum”. It has also been characterised as the “first contemporary election”.

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The referendum, the first major vote of its kind to be overseen by the Electoral Commission following its establishment in 2000, was conducted entirely by postal ballot under the provisions of the Regional Assemblies (Preparations) Act 2003.

It was the only one of the three planned Northern England referendums to take place, following the indefinite postponement of the votes in North West England and Yorkshire and the Humber on 22 July 2004.

The other referendums were postponed due to concerns over the security and procedural regularity of all-postal ballots; however, the vote in the North East was allowed to proceed, partly because the region was considered Labour’s strongest electoral area and was assumed to hold the most support for the proposal.

The proposed assemblies followed the model established by the London Assembly (endorsed by a referendum in 1998).

The 2004 result, however, delivered a stunning rebuff to the government.

Voters rejected the proposed assembly by 77.9% to 22.1%, on a turnout of 48%. Every council area in the region returned a majority for the ‘no’ campaign.

The ‘Yes’ campaign, Yes4theNorthEast, was defeated despite the support of the deputy prime minister, John Prescott, and Labour’s strength in the region (which included Blair’s Sedgefield seat). The Sedgefield district rejected the plan by 61.7% to 38.3%.

Yes4theNorthEast also cited the endorsement of local celebrities, including Paul Gascoigne. “We need a strong voice for the northeast”, Gazza said. “We want to keep our kids in Newcastle so they don’t have to go to London for jobs. It’s about giving our kids a chance.”

It may have been an attempt to mimic Sean Connery’s support of a Scottish parliament in the 1997 referendum campaign.

Speaking after the result was declared, Prescott conceded that the devolution cause had suffered an “emphatic” defeat.

At a press conference in Sunderland, the deputy prime minister responded: “I might be disappointed. It is an emphatic defeat for the possibility of an elected regional assembly. The North-east public have answered in an emphatic way. I am a democrat and I accept that.

“I was surprised by the clear majority and I think there was a number of reasons for that – and claims of more politicians and greater council tax has an effect.

“It was an overwhelming defeat for the proposal put before the North-east public. As a government we believe in letting the people have their say.”

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The successful ‘No’ campaign, North East Says No (Nesno), was led by local businessman John Elliott. Its strategic direction, however, was heavily influenced by Dominic Cummings, who served as Nesno’s campaign director.

Nesno questioned the cost, power and necessity of the proposed institution. Its core arguments centred on the fact that the assembly would have limited real powers, arguing that it would be an expensive “white elephant” and disproportionately centralised around Newcastle upon Tyne.

Nesno even commissioned a huge white elephant, which was then toured around the North East during the campaign.

The campaign pitted the public against the political establishment. Its populist messaging would later be associated with the successful Vote Leave campaign in the 2016 referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union (EU).

Cummings famously directed the Vote Leave campaign, before serving as chief adviser to Boris Johnson from July 2019 to November 2020.

Cummings, the County Durham native and sometimes sightseer, coined the Nesno campaign slogan: “Politicians talk, we pay.”

This phrase, emblazoned across fake £50 notes, formed the centrepiece of a Nesno political broadcast.

The advert stated: “The regional assembly would create more politicians, so as you would expect it means the regional assembly will come with huge extra cost. The bill for the north-east would be a staggering £1 million per week.”

Notably, the ‘No’ campaign argued that the cash required to run the political institutions should instead be redirected to frontline public services, such as the National Health Service.

This message was effectively copy and pasted onto the side a certain red bus, which toured the country during the 2016 Brexit referendum. “We send the EU £350 million a week, let’s fund our NHS instead”, the coach counselled voters.

Cummings himself later described the 2004 victory as starting “60-40 behind with no money, no digital campaign, no ground campaign, every force in the North East hostile, and with the campaign consisting of not much more than my girlfriend, dad, uncle and literally a handful of people. I think we spent ~£50-100k. We won 80-20.”

Cummings wrote: “These guys didn’t learn from the 2004 referendum before 2016 and even now very few seem to realise that a ‘second referendum’ would, given minimal competence from ‘Leave’, be a mega-repeat of 2004 in which ‘the EU’ would not even be the main issue.”

He added: “[The 2004 campaign] was a training exercise that turned out surprisingly well.”

Nesno’s chief spokesperson, Graham Robb, described the operation as “Britain’s first populist campaign”.

Blair’s vision of Cool Britannia was abruptly displaced by a style of campaigning – and a type of campaigner – that would come to define British politics in the decades that followed.

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Responding to the result in 2004, John Elliott said: “I’m not interested in giving the government a bloody nose – I am sure they are honourable people. But I would rather John Prescott has two weeks’ embarrassment than us be saddled with a £25m white elephant.”

Bernard Jenkin, shadow minister for the regions, said: “This is an astonishing rejection of the government’s plans. It must herald the death of Labour’s bogus regional agenda. We call on Mr Prescott to scrap all plans for regional assemblies.”

Prescott subsequently ruled out further referendums in the North West and Yorkshire and the Humber for the foreseeable future.

In a statement to the commons on 8 November, Prescott said: “It is worth remembering that proposals for Scottish and Welsh devolution failed to win public support in the first referendum in 1979, only for the situation to be reversed 20 years later in a new referendum.”

The Electoral Commission had already been asked to draw up a new model for postal ballots due to concerns about fraud. With Blair at his side, Prescott said there would be no referendums in the other regions until the watchdog reported.

The 2004 referendum therefore ended the New Labour government’s policy of regional devolution in England.

In so doing, New Labour were thwarted in their attempts to provide a partial answer to the ‘West Lothian question’ – a constitutional dilemma, famously articulated by Labour MP Tam Dalyell, which arose from the creation of the Scottish parliament and Welsh assembly in 1999.

Some years later, John Elliott, who chaired the Nesno campaign, pledged his support to Reform UK under the leadership of Nigel Farage.