WE all know who is to blame for the rail crisis. The Tories, who rushed through the deeply flawed privatisation of the railways. And New Labour, which has failed to do anything much about the railways for four long years.

More specifically, there's the present Transport Secretary, Stephen Byers, who bungled the 're-nationalisation' of Railtrack. Oh, and his predecessor John Prescott, who talked portentously about integrated transport and rural bus services and did nothing.

And we must not forget their post-war predecessors, each of whom failed to secure proper funding for Britain's railways. In the last ten years, when the network was visibly falling apart, the proportion of Gross Domestic Product spent on public transport has actually fallen from two per cent to one per cent.

So beleaguered passengers know who to blame for the mess. Now all they want to know is: who is going to sort it out?

The transport ministry seems too busy firefighting - plugging a Railtrack funding hole here, trying to negotiate an end to threatened rail strikes there. We vaguely recall something about a ten-year transport plan, but that was derailed long ago by the ageing rail network's infrastructure.

What Britain needs is a clear, long- term strategy that aims to deliver a 21st century railway during the next 20 years. Appointing Lord Birt to think "blue sky" thoughts is just a start.

Meantime, someone in Government must get a grip on the current chaos. That man is not Stephen Byers.

The Railtrack fiasco reminded us why he is not up to the job. We already knew that.

Mr Byers' decision not to award a 20-year franchise to one of our best train operators, GNER, was a desperate failure of vision. It destabilised GNER and denied it long-term investment - exactly the problems that have crippled our railways for 50 years.

Mr Byers' tenure as Transport Secretary should go the way of so many train services, and be terminated without notice.

Updated: 10:41 Thursday, January 10, 2002