This is one of the most profoundly depressing political stories I’ve read in a long time.

Not because it’s a bad idea – it’s not; it’s precisely the sort of thing for which the country has been crying out for years – but because Arrivederci Gordon’s useless Labour government is allowing the Tories – THE MOTHERFUCKING TORIES! – to claim the moral high ground on environmentalism and public transport.

These are the same people who spent 18 years running the rail network into the ground by refusing to invest in it, and then flogging it off in a recklessly dangerous manner to chancer-carpetbaggers that somehow means taxpayers now pay more to subsidise the railway network than ever before.

These are the same people who, frankly, my dear, gave so little a damn about the environment that they put Nicholas Ridley in charge of it for three years.

And now here’s Posh Boy Dave and The Eton Rifles saying, “Actually, you know, there might be some votes in this after all.  Might make sense to stop people flying 150 miles because the train service is so pisspoor it’s usually quicker and cheaper to do so.  Might make sense to upgrade the railways if the oil price is about to shoot off the charts for good.  Sod the ideology, feel the election night count.”

And where’s our Transport Secretary?  (That’ll be The Rt. Hon. Ruth Kelly, New Labour MP for Opus Dei.)  She’s packing her fucking boxes instead of battering down the doors to the Channel 4 News and Newsnight studios to decry the hypocrisy of it all.

The Ad Man is going to win.  And it’s time to re-investigate those emigration options.