A TRANSPORT minister should know that the wrong kind of anything can cause a derailment. Leaves, snow, wind, sun and, in this case, publicity. And so the political career of Stephen John Byers was thrown from the rails.

Yesterday's resignation was a surprise. Although Mr Byers had attracted the wrong kind of headlines, he also appeared to blessed with the best escapology routine in the business.

Only a couple of weeks ago, a North-East Cabinet minister (an endangered species themselves following the falls of Peter Mandelson, Mo Mowlam and now Mr Byers) was saying privately how Mr Byers was well enough liked to keep his job, how important it was not to sacrifice a minister and allow the Tories to think they are dictating who is in the Government, and how - anyhow - Steve was basically on the right track.

Indeed, within the rail industry there was quiet sympathy for him yesterday as, since effectively taking Railtrack back into public ownership in October, the company has begun to concentrate on railways rather than shareholders. And in the North-East there was also quiet sympathy as he was the man who had delivered a White Paper on regional government and seemed set to see it through.

But he had attracted the wrong kind of reputation. He had allied himself far too closely to his spindoctor Jo Moore who'd tried to bury bad news in the most despicable way on September 11. His department had become a shambles as he didn't know whether a senior figure, Martin Sixsmith, had been sacked. He'd admitted misleading the public over the affair but arrogantly hadn't apologised. He'd performed a blatant u-turn by promising not to compensate Railtrack shareholders and then compensating them. He'd said Railtrack would be out of administration within three months but it now looks likely to drag on for over a year with the public having no idea about his public/private vision.

There was even the odious spectacle of a ban on foxhunting being thrown to baying Labour backbenchers after they had loyally turned out to express their support for the troubled minister.

And crucially, Mr Byers was unable to clear up his little messes without them turning into a stinking pile of acrid accusations about his inability to tell the truth. Even if he did announce that he'd resigned, ran the joke, no one would believe that he had really quit.

It is ironic that Mr Byers' name has become synonymous with spinning, and the public's growing dislike of it, because he wasn't very good at it. This is the man, remember, who last October started to dismantle the Tories' despised privatised rail system by wiping out Railtrack - the most disliked and distrusted private company in the country - but he handled it so badly that he was forced into hiding as the agenda was set by angry shareholders - people who'd gorged themselves on taxpayers' subsidies while the rail network they owned part of had become demonstrably unsafe.

The unveiling of that regional government White Paper in Newcastle earlier this month showed how Mr Byers had become a burden on the Government. This central plank of policy - a radical redrawing of the way we govern ourselves and even of the way we think about ourselves - was all but drowned out by the clamour for Mr Byers' head. Even the tamer local press were prevented from questioning the Newcastle MP about his plans for a North-East assembly for fear that they'd slip in a naughty one about his supposed untruths.

This is no way for an effective minister to operate. In the aftermath of the Potters Bar rail crash, the man whose duty it was to sympathise with the bereaved and reassure the travelling public that they were safe was known as "the Pinochio of politics". The wrong kind of publicity was following Mr Byers' every move. On May 17, he managed to leak himself into trouble by telling the truth. He hinted to journalists over lunch that a Bill paving the way for a referendum on euro-membership will come before the House of Commons next year. It is obvious this will happen because, if the economic tests for entry are passed next June, the Government will be accused of dithering if doesn't act immediately on preparing the referendum. Mr Byers' big mistake was to logically trace this timetable so that it began with the Queen's Speech in November.

Minister tells the truth and states the blinking obvious shouldn't be a front page shock story - but when the minister is Mr Byers even the contents of his plate (seafood, since you ask) will attract column inches.

But this presented Mr Blair with a problem of Mandelsonian proportions. The Hartlepool MP was the architect of Mr Blair's New Labour and the North Tyneside MP referred to himself as the "out-rider" for Mr Blair. At the 1996 party conference, Mr Byers lunched with journalists (fish this time, as your appetite for Byers dietary titbits is clearly whetted) he heretically suggested that Labour should cut its links with the unions. Outcry ensued, but it was at Mr Blair's bidding.

The Prime Minister had moved swiftly to sack Mr Mandelson for the second time in January 2001 over the Hinduja passport affair. He hoped it would look like strong, decisive leadership, but Mr Mandelson awkwardly protested his innocence and subsequent inquiries suggested he had committed no dismissable offence. With hindsight, Mr Blair looks over-hasty in ending the ministerial career of his close-friend from Hartlepool, and doubtless feels some personal guilt about it; he didn't want to repeat the mistake with his out-rider from North Tyneside.

Plus Mr Blair knew that whoever inherited transport would inherit unpopularity about the state of Britain's railways - unpopularity partly of Mr Blair's own making. At his first Cabinet meeting in 1997 he said transport was not a priority and so, during his first term in office, railways went nowhere. Road-charging, which has to be addressed if congestion is to be tackled, was ducked because of its unpopularity with motorists.

This is sadly typical of the way successive Governments have treated transport. Mr Byers has lasted 13 months as Transport Secretary. In Labour's first four years, there were four Secretaries with John Prescott powerlessly over-seeing their work. In 18 Tory years, there were 12; in total in the last 30 years, there have been 21 different Transport Secretaries.

It is no wonder that the British public struggle to get from A to B when the people in charge of their transport are so new to their job that they are struggling to find their way to their office.

Now a 22nd Secretary will have to discover his route into Eland House in Whitehall. He will have to work out his way around the files of Railtrack where agreement was pending, of the London Underground which was so complicated that no new trains were likely until 2008, of air traffic control where systems failures threaten this summer's holidays, and even of regional government where a Bill has to be written ready for November.

Yesterday was a good day for the Government to bury a minister with a knack for the wrong kind of publicity, and, for all his troubles with lies, Mr Byers at least faced up to the truth that he had become a political liability. But he was slowly - painfully slowly - getting transport back on track and his departure can only mean more delays ahead.