Yorkshire's role in election fight

Both men also achieved this feat before heading off in different directions to take their policies to the people. If the Prime Minister is to be believed, Britain is on "the road to recovery", but it cannot afford for the recovery to change direction.

Unerringly, Mr Cameron used a similar phrase to make a different point before heading to Leeds. The nation, he said, is on "the road to ruin" and only the Tories can put the nation back on a "path to progress and prosperity" – the latter being a choice of words promptly repeated by Labour Ministers and the Liberal Democrats.

These are not new themes. When he called the 2005 election five years ago, Tony Blair used similar language in promising to "entrench" economic stability and public sector investment. If only. And, when he left office two years later, Mr Brown used the phrase "change" – now the Tory word of the moment – eight times on the steps of Downing Street.

It is little wonder so many voters are disillusioned when the campaign is so scripted and the only discernible difference between the parties is a slight change of emphasis in their approach to the national debt.

Yet this election does matter, and apathy is not an answer. The sheer scale of the budget deficit, and complex social policy decisions left unanswered for so long, means that this is a pivotal "once in a generation" election. To continue the roads analogy, Britain is at a crossroads – and the next government needs to have a clear mandate on the public's preferred route to reform.

It is why every vote matters, as the politicians are so fond of saying. But, for this to happen, it is incumbent upon those seeking high office to explain how their policies will make a difference. Bland platitudes will not suffice; they simply play into the hands of the apathetic. This needs to be an election determined by policy rather than personality.

Inevitably, it will be a national election dominated by national

issues. Indeed, the war in Afghanistan provides an international dimension.

Intrinsically, it is also about Yorkshire's future – and its place in the engine room of a national, and evolving, economy. It is why this newspaper has published today a manifesto for Yorkshire, a set of policies to concentrate the minds of politicians – national and local – while on the campaign trail.

This blueprint does not demand special treatment for Yorkshire at the

expense of others, but a fair funding deal that recognises the extent to which this area has been shortchanged in the past.

It also extends beyond the future of regional development agencies such as Yorkshire Forward. When he launched his campaign in London before last night's fleeting visit to Leeds, Mr Cameron spoke of the need to scale back the regional bureaucracy. Contrast this with Mr Brown, who believes RDAs must drive economic recovery.

If only the solution was so simple. It is not. Yorkshire Forward's future is just one element – albeit a significant element – of the campaign battle. As our manifesto shows, the whole regional economy is in need of reform, renewal and re-invigoration through the provision of new, and improved transport links, while the cost of caring for an ageing population is becoming more acute by the day. Schools and

health services also face transition, as do those areas which remain too dependent upon the public sector – either through jobs or the number of benefit claimants.

The party leaders say the choice rests with the electorate. It does – but only when they have outlined, clearly, those choices, and where Labour's "big government" or the Conservatives' "big society" will ultimately take Yorkshire families and businesses on the electoral journey into the future.