91Èȱ¬

I've had my first taste of the new politics and it's going to take some getting used to!

This week was the first ever broadcast without a Labour government in office.

And of course there are very few political journalists alive who have ever interviewed the representatives of a coalition administration.

Yet that is the reality the voters, the politicians and journalists have now got to get used to.

You can see how it all worked out in the programme on the 91Èȱ¬'s iPlayer.

Our panel discussion pitched together Durham North's Kevan Jones for Labour, Yorkshire MEP Timothy Kirkhope for the Conservatives and the new Redcar MP Ian Swales for the Lib Dems.

And what an unusual cocktail it turned out to be.

Kevan Jones seemed positively liberated by being in Opposition. Revelling in being able to turn his fire on both the Tories and the Liberal Democrats, rather than defending decisions his government had taken.

Ian Swales was the first Liberal Democrat I've ever interviewed about being in government, and had to adjust to defending Conservative policies as well as his own party's.

And then you had Tim Kirkhope - a Conservative weighing in to defend the Lib Dems.

It really is a new politics!

Kevan Jones was immediately in old-style attack mode though on the coalition policies.

There were some half truths being bandied about by the former Labour minister.

One North East is being abolished according to Mr Jones - it may possibly go, but as yet it's fate hasn't been decided.

He also claimed Hartlepool and Cumbria won't get new nuclear power stations, when actually it's the anti-nuclear Lib Dems who've given ground in that area.

But one issue he latched onto is going to dominate discussions over the next few weeks - the scale of cuts and their impact on our region.

The Lib Dems are now going along with the £6bn of cuts that the Conservatives say are necessary immediately, and they will want to study carefully what that could mean.

In reality, that will be just the first tranche of cuts which could be ten times that value.

The coalition will point to the deficit left by Labour, and blame the scale of the problem on Gordon Brown's mismanagement of the public finances.

And .

But they will still be the ones implementing the cuts and that will be seized upon by the coalition's opponents.

Kevan Jones mentioned the impact of the decision to scrap Labour plans for ID cards and biometric passports.

Much of that work was going to be carried out by the .

There are also stories already about .

Meanwhile, there are other pressing issues too.

Ian Swales will be meeting representatives from Corus's parent company Tata this week to discuss what can be done to find a buyer for Redcar's steelworks.

So it may be new politics, but in some cases it's the same old problems.

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