Network Rail (NR) chief executive Mark Carne has finally, after three days of ducking and diving, accepted that he should not accept a performance-related annual pay bonus.

The penny has dropped that “we have disappointed too many passengers particularly at King’s Cross and Paddington in the aftermath of Christmas.”

Carne has come to realise that, as chief executive, he is “accountable for the performance of the railway, and bonuses are performance-related, and I think at the moment our performance is not good enough.”

No shit, Sherlock! In the annals of people in power stating the bleeding obvious, few overpaid bosses can have so accurately summed up the dilemma before them.

Network Rail is a publicly owned and operated company that replaced disaster-prone private operation Railtrack after it failed to meet its responsibilities in the wake of the 2000 Hatfield crash.

Carne’s recognition that his responsibility to improve the performance of the railway has not been met ought to have ensured no mention of any bonus.

But not only does he pull down an annual salary of £675,000 — about four times what the Prime Minister gets for running the country into the ground — but he could have received a bonus top-up of a further £135,000.

Had he been as thick-skinned as some of his fellow City fat cats, he could certainly have relied on the Network Rail remuneration committee to nod his bonus through.

In the world of the 1 per cent, one hand washes the other, everyone scratches each other’s back and those who need money least are guaranteed more of it every year.

The income gap between those at the bottom and the tiny minority at the top yawns ever wider, because, we all know, rich people need the encouragement of vast sums of money to give of their best while poor workers respond most favourably to a kick in the teeth.

So former oil executive Carne took up his new post a year ago, being paid £80,000 more than his predecessor, while rail passengers face the prospect this week of fare increases touching 20 per cent during the life of this Parliament.

No wonder rail union Aslef leader Mick Whelan said last year at the time of Carne’s appointment that his gilded salary deal “exposes the extraordinary lack of governance and lack of proper public scrutiny in Network Rail.”

Labour’s shadow transport secretary Michael Dugher patted himself on the back for Carne’s decision, having urged him on Monday not to take his bonus.

But neither Dugher nor Ed Miliband in his new year message drew the obvious conclusion that two-thirds of the electorate will have drawn over this latest proof that the privatised railways are failing the people of this country.

Who could argue with RMT general secretary Mick Cash’s comment that, with government subsidies to train operating companies amounting to just over £4 billion in 2012-13, this is “a one-way ticket to the bank for the train companies?”

Miliband’s attempt to conjure up the spirit of 1945 by talking about a “recovery which reaches your kitchen table,” while nailing Labour’s colours to austerity and private ownership, is pathetic.

If the Labour leader is too timid to upset the City by pledging to renationalise our railways, his efforts to enthuse voters by recalling postwar Labour government achievements of building the NHS, a modern welfare state and homes for the people is empty rhetoric.