So that's what's been going on. It has been uncanny over the past couple of weeks. You couldn't bump into a No 10 person without having your ear bent about the abject failure of the government's transport policy - above all, on rail. "It is a complete disaster. Tony's livid," says one official. "On rail, we have no story to tell," confides another. "Rail is becoming our number-one priority, even more important than the NHS," says a minister who is close to the heart of things.

So what has prompted this sudden bout of self-criticism, this obsession with the railways? Now we know. Tony Blair's personal focus-groupie, Philip Gould, has held a few of his special sessions and discovered that people are getting very fed up indeed that the trains never run on time, or (sometimes) anywhere. It is a shame that the government needs Philip Gould to tell it what has long been perfectly plain to the travelling public.

Millions of people know that the slide has been accelerating downward from mere irritating grime and unreliability to chaos. Across Britain, regular rail commuters are now mentally adding an hour to their journey plans, preparing excuses, or simply avoiding meetings they would otherwise attend. There is a deeply disillusioned "who cares?" feel to the system, which was noticeable before Railtrack was hit over the head, but is absolutely omnipresent now. You don't go to "take" or "meet" a train, you just loll listlessly at the station and perk up if one happens to stop.

It is funny, in a way, but also disgraceful. Yet until now, the political world has been slow to read this as a major crisis. Political savants "know" that the really important, bread-and-butter issues are the economy, health and education. Rail involves too few people by comparison. It is "second-order".

This is the political logic that failed to provide the necessary financial boost to the railways, or to focus on Railtrack, until far too late. It is nonsense on wheels. Education is getting (a bit) better. The economy is running pretty smoothly. There is even a chance that the lid will be kept - although sputteringly - on problems in the NHS. In these circumstances, with many people in a serious grump about new Labour's alleged cynicism and incompetence, the atrocious state of the trains has become a focus for political revolt. The railway system is the front line of the battle over the very future of the public sector. Ministers are right to fear that it could become the foot-and-mouth of 2002, except more serious still. This is, in short, the first government in British history that could be savaged by voters because of its transport policy.

Roads and car policies, too, are growing problems - and in terms of numbers of voters, far harder ones. But doing something about rail is what Labour has to achieve in the next 12 months. The proportion of trains that are running late has risen from a quarter to one-third since Railtrack was taken into administration, and the public perception is that it's even worse than that.

The middle classes cannot opt out of the public system, in the way that they can with health or education. Private health insurance and private schools for the kids are easy enough for those with money; hiring a train (or an empty road) for your own private use to get you to work on time presents more of a problem. And it's the middle classes who like to complain, to talk loudly of Third World Britain.

Given the sudden prominence of transport as an issue, it is surprising that there is not more debate about what should be done. It is as if ministers think that turning Railtrack into a "not-for-profit" company, together with a general shrinkage of the number of train-operating companies, will be enough. But demolishing the independence and authority of the privatised sector risks producing the worst of all worlds - failing private rail companies, with politicians getting all the blame. The outcome of the Railtrack saga is that the public think that Blair and Stephen Byers are now in charge of the trains. They will not easily be persuaded otherwise.

There are short-term fixes, from better rostering of drivers to a vastly improved information service, and if ministers are not working with John Armitt, the new chief executive of Railtrack, to improve such things urgently, they should be. But in the end, something more fundamental is needed. For once, I am forced to agree with Bob Crow, assistant general secretary of the rail union RMT, who recently pronounced: "The [rail] system has to be run like an army, really - at the end of the day, a command-and-control situation."

For a country to have a properly functioning rail system (essential for economic success) this must be run efficiently by the government. On a crowded island, criss-crossed by clogged roads and increasingly obsessed by environmental worries, there is no decent economic future for us without good railways. They may be a 19th-century invention and network, but they are an essential asset in the 21st century.

It's time for Labour to recognise this and say straightforwardly that the government is taking the railways back into full public ownership and control. Private companies can run trains, if they work closely with the government; but we need a single ticketing, track and strategic system, run by properly paid public servants who believe in the common good.

That might sound like romantic, old Labourish, wishful thinking. But what is "new" Labour anyway, these days - this party that has returned to campaigning for a better NHS funded by higher taxes, and which increasingly admits that it is redistributing money to the working poor? Times have changed. A simple renationalisation of the railways would be very popular in the country, and would rekindle a spark of hope in the travelling public. Sometimes the obvious answer is the right one as well.

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