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They came, they saw, they sounded a bit similar.

The Labour leadership contest came to the North with a hustings for party members in Newcastle.

If I was being cruel, I'd point out the aptness of holding it in a museum full of dinosaurs and other vanquished big beasts. ().

But actually, if anything the healthy turnout and generally positive atmosphere spoke of a party that isn't ready for extinction just yet.

Could any of the five candidates on show though offer the distinctive vision that could get Labour back into power?

For four of the contenders, discerning that becomes a matter of hanging on every word, .

It's unlikely the Milibands, Ed Balls and Andy Burnham are ever going to fall out about the general direction of the party.

There were some interesting moments though.

When Andy Burnham talked about ending the party's parachuting of candidates into constituencies he was sat next to David Miliband (parachuted into South Shields circa 2001 I believe).

But Miliband D did manage to successfully play the local card to try and prove that he does now have an affection for and understanding of a region he arrived in a decade ago.

But he did point out that Labour needed to win in Stevenage as well as South Shields.

Some distinctively northern issues did come up though.

The imminent extinction of regional development agencies like One North East was the subject of one question.

Ed Miliband talked of mutualising Northern Rock and using it as a model of how a new kind of banking sector could be based in the regions.

Andy Burnham pondered whether people might regret not voting for a regional assembly now that a Conservative-led government was implementing severe cuts.

But otherwise it needed some close studying of every word to find much difference in approach.

David Miliband said Tony Blair made a mistake by only truly focusing on "education, education, education" for the first four years of his premiership. He even talked of getting 70%, not 50% of young people into university.

Ed Miliband talked about favouring a graduate tax instead of tuition fees as a way of funding higher education.

Ed Balls said he'd favour making anyone earning over £100,000 pay the top 50% rate of tax (at the moment you have to earn more than £150,000).

Of course, the one candidate who does have the most distinctive views is Diane Abbott.

She spoke of levying a wealth tax, of cancelling Trident, of ending privatisation.

She got the biggest laugh when a question came up about the three months before an election.

Did she and the other contenders think the UK Labour party might have won the election had they been brave enough to get rid of Gordon Brown in the same way?

No, she said, but they were right in one thing - the decision to put a woman in charge.

She also got the loudest cheer from the audience at the end.

But she still seems an unlikely winner, even though she may well come ahead of some of the other contenders.

And the overall verdict?

Purely anecdotally from talking to members afterwards, there was some surprise at how well Ed Balls performed and some sense of a lack of substance from Andy Burnham.

Ed Miliband was perhaps the leader who spoke most to the hearts of some I spoke to, but it was his brother who still seemed the most likely a Prime Minister in waiting.

They now have to make the crucial choice. Get it right and they could be picking the next PM, get it wrong and they risk turning the party into one of those museum pieces.

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