LABOUR’S latest proposals on tackling Britain’s railway crisis show the party is waking up to public anger.

Shadow transport secretary Mary Creagh notes that the ballooning cost of travel — with commuter season ticket prices soaring 20 per cent under this government while real incomes have fallen — is unsustainable.

“We can’t go on like this,” she says, pledging “the biggest railway reforms since the Tories’ botched privatisation.”

Two-thirds of Britons — including majorities of Conservative and Liberal Democrat voters — back a return to a publicly owned rail service, so Labour has plenty of room to be bold.

Sadly its plethora of policies show it is still toying with half-baked compromises rather than daring to face up to the profiteering fat cats leeching money from our rail network.

Ms Creagh calls for a new “single guiding mind” planning all travel by train.

It would “contract routes, co-ordinate services, oversee stations, fares and ticketing, plan new rolling stock, raise skills and be accountable for customer satisfaction.”

Fine. But in what way would this differ from a nationalised rail service? 

Except that it will constantly be wrestling with companies with quite different priorities — ie to see how far they can squeeze passengers’ wallets, cut corners on staffing and safety and milk the public purse for subsidies in order to pay shareholder dividends.

HIHLabour says it will build a franchising system that is “fit for purpose,” and legislating to allow a public-sector operator to bid against private firms for contracts would be a step forward compared with what the Con-Dem coalition can offer long-suffering passengers.

But it is no substitute for rail nationalisation, which can be done free of charge by simply taking contracts back into public hands when they expire.

If Labour thinks its half-way house will spare it the wrath of business tycoons, used to seeing politicians dance to their neoliberal tune, it is sorely mistaken.

Transport operator Go Ahead chief executive David Brown made that clear by whinging to the Financial Times that allowing public-sector bids would mean the government was both bidder and referee.

“They would have to prove that there is a transparent process in place,” he grumbles, seemingly unaware that the current contracting process by which firms such as Virgin and FirstGroup snap up franchises is far from transparent.

Other business moguls echo the squeals of harassed bankers when challenged on their telephone-number salaries — challenge us and we’ll leave.

Train companies might be “deterred” from bidding for contracts if they had to compete with the public sector, Rail Delivery Group chief executive Martin Griffiths said last month.

Aside from Mr Griffiths’s unconscious acknowledgement that the private sector would struggle to rival public-sector value for money, his threat that they might “look for opportunities elsewhere” will move no-one.

Britain’s travelling public are unlikely to shed tears at hearing the likes of Richard Branson plan to stop ripping us off and are on the prowl for some other mugs to fleece.

All we learn from these dire warnings is that the privateers are likely to fight tooth and nail to stop us winning back control of public transport.

This is likely to include suing the government when they lose out on contracts they consider themselves entitled to.

Labour should rid itself of the entire franchising nightmare. Nationalising the railways is in the public interest and would win it millions of votes.