A greater part of Andy Burnham’s credibility rests on delivering better railways for the whole of the North - Andrew Vine

The reason it becomes so hard to recall exactly what happened when is because the disappointments have come so regularly over so extended a period that they all blur into one.

One thing, though, is crystal clear – they represent a monumental failure by successive governments to give England’s largest county the modern transport network it has been crying out for across decades.

The picture is only made foggier by the fact that Yorkshire has consistently been fobbed off with promises of a brighter future some time down the line.

But we’ve never reached that point, and as yet another year approaches its close, we’re left clinging to the hope that the current promise of that brighter future – better rail links across the Pennine by the 2040s – might come true.

Let’s hope it does, but I can’t imagine many residents of Yorkshire put much faith in that happening. It is not that we have become cynical, more that when we’ve been failed repeatedly, we tend to take politicians’ promises with a large pinch of salt.

That means many will have greeted the government wriggling out of a long-standing promise to electrify the railway line from Leeds to Hull with a feeling of weary familiarity. Here is another let-down to add to all the others.

Instead of a fully-electrified line promising faster journeys, passengers travelling between these two great cities are expected to make do with battery-powered trains, which the new Liberal Democrat member of the House of Lords, Lord McCobb, has attacked as dodging a commitment.

He’s absolutely right, of course, and his intervention has highlighted another aspect of government failures to modernise Yorkshire’s rail network – that the east of our county always gets ignored.

For evidence of that, we only have to recall the rhetoric from both Conservative and Labour administrations about Northern Powerhouse Rail and its new era for cross-Pennine travel.

It has always focussed on the link between Leeds and Manchester. Nobody has ever talked much about the line to Hull, almost as if the 60 miles of Yorkshire between Leeds and the Humber is so unimportant that it can manage with the railway it has.

This is nonsense. The people of East Yorkshire and Hull deserve no less than their neighbours in Leeds and West Yorkshire. And neglecting the east overlooks the vital importance of Hull and the other Humber ports to Britain’s economy.

Earlier this month, there was further proof of how transport links to the east of Yorkshire have not received the attention or investment they deserve when councillors in Whitby challenged the Prime Minister to travel to their town by rail from his Manchester office.

It would take him getting on for 11 hours to make the round trip, such is the convoluted route involving passengers having to go via Middlesbrough. The service feels so long-winded that it is no surprise Whitby’s visitors overwhelmingly arrive by road, choking the town with traffic during the summer.

Given the decades of failure to make good on promises of better railways for the north, neither the residents of Whitby or Hull can expect improved services any time soon, let alone the transformative 21st century network that has been promised for the best part of 30 years.

Whether Andy Burnham acknowledges it or not, a greater part of his credibility rests on delivering better railways for the whole of the north than was the case for any of his recent predecessors as Prime Minister.

That is because he made such a song and dance about the lack of government investment in railways during his tenure as Greater Manchester Mayor, he is under an obligation to do something about it now he holds the purse strings, or appear be the least trustworthy of a long line of politicians making promises that never amount to anything.

Offering half-hearted solutions, such as battery-powered trains for Hull or more buses instead of trams for West Yorkshire, won’t cut it with the people of Yorkshire, who will have a close eye on what happens on the other side of the Pennines.

If, as seems possible, the first – and possibly only – part of Northern Powerhouse Rail to be built is a fast link between Mr Burnham’s Manchester base and his native Liverpool, it will be impossible to avoid the conclusion that the Prime Minister is less a champion of the north than of his own cherished corner of it.