HOW much time does Ed Miliband need before finally coming to the conclusion that most voters drew many years ago that rail privatisation must be reversed.

The Labour leader presents himself as a tortured soul struggling with alternatives of equal weight in working out which way forward for our railways.

He doesn’t want to be portrayed as living in the past by returning to “the old monolithic model that was British Rail,” but, on the other hand, private monopolies are soaking up £4 billion in state subsidies and taking hundreds of millions of pounds in annual profits.

Oh dear, what is a poor dithering politician to do in such a difficult position?

This is the same Ed Miliband that reacted within 24 hours to a deceitful media campaign about candidate selection in Falkirk by decreeing a fundamental change in relations between Labour and its affiliated trade union members.

He didn’t feel the need to debate the issue with those most closely involved or take the question to Labour’s annual conference.

The leader spoke. From then on the only issue was how to change the rules to achieve a cleavage between the unions and the party they created.

No such decisiveness over challenging the right of a small number of private conglomerates to feast off the exchequer even though party conference has already voted overwhelmingly for public ownership.

Opinion polls regularly indicate at least a two-thirds majority support for renationalisation.

It’s not as though the issue has suddenly forced itself into public attention as a result of the letter from 31 Labour prospective parliamentary candidates or John Prescott’s belated reconversion to public ownership.

Transport unions Aslef, RMT, TSSA and Unite have made the case for renationalisation virtually from the day that John Major’s dying Tory government landed us with this dead duck of a scheme.

Every pre-privatisation claim about the superiority of private-sector ownership and management has proven false.

Promises that state subsidies would be reduced and even ended have faded away as the privateers have hoovered up £4bn a year in handouts.

Value for money by dint of sharp competition has translated into goldmines for the favoured few or, in the event of franchises won through unrealistic quotes, the simple option of abandoning them without penalty.

Rail privatisation has been a disaster for the public purse, for rail staff and passengers.

Insistence on removing our railway system from the sticky fingers of the privateers is not in itself an ideologically driven demand. 

It simply makes sense on the basis of every criterion.

Miliband’s shadow business secretary Chuka Umunna mutters about not being “dogmatic or closed in either direction, public or private. The question is what works.”

The problem is that Labour’s economic team is still dominated by new Labour’s obsession with “private good, public bad,” which is why every bid to commit the party to privatisation’s reversal has been squashed.

Prescott’s recognition that renationalisation could be achieved with little cost by returning franchises to the public sector as they expire has been advocated for years by the rail unions.

It underpinned the renationalisation Bill proposed last summer by Green MP Caroline Lucas.

The case is as clear as day. If Labour continues to drag its feet on this key policy, it will demonstrate graphically that the current leadership is dogmatically committed to private ownership and profits over the public interest.