WHEN Labour MPs and supporters express alarm about Ed Miliband’s dismal poll ratings, they are told: ‘Yes, but look at all our policies!”

The leader’s team tries to ease fears that the public has already rejected him by arguing his policy bag is bulging with goodies that people do like and will vote for.

Mr Miliband himself made this point at last week’s tricky meeting of MPs, proudly telling them Labour is readier than it was ahead of the 1997 triumph – its happiest memory.

And – with an £8 minimum wage, 25 free hours of childcare, 200,000 new homes a year by 2020 and 8,000 more doctors all ready for the manifesto – I was willing to accept this claim.

Then I had lunch with Mary Creagh, Labour’s transport spokeswoman…

After this get-together, with a group of Westminster journalists, it’s hard to see what hope Labour is offering to the North’s long-suffering, investment-starved travellers.

It was the ideal moment to toss my questions at Ms Creagh, with crucial decisions about road and rail to be taken before the year’s end.

In December, specifications for the new Northern Rail and TransPennine franchises will be published, crucial decisions laying down what the operators must deliver over almost the next decade.

We know Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin is considering allowing fares to let rip – to close the alleged gap in commuter ticket prices between North and South.

And we know he is ready to renege on an earlier pledge to replace those creaking Pacer trains that still rumble around the region after 30 long, slow, noisy, pollution-pumping years.

Meanwhile, in the same month, the Chancellor will reveal how much the A1 to Scotland he will upgrade – potentially delivering where Labour failed, in its own heartland.

All these issues have been well-trailed – and Ms Creagh is a Yorkshire MP – so she will have had her answers oven-ready, won’t she? Err, sadly not.

Instead, all she could do is warn nasty rail decisions may be irreversible – while suggesting, on the A1, nothing had changed since Labour’s ‘no’ back in 2006.

In the summer, I bemoaned Labour’s scared-of-its-own-shadow caution in refusing to take the railways into state ownership, despite the obvious failures of privatisation.

Now that timidity appears to extend across rail policy – even as the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats prepare bold pledges to create a ‘Northern powerhouse’ across the Pennines.

And, while I’m at it, Labour’s policy on buses – to somehow help local councils seeking control, by sparing them long, expensive legal battles with the private giants – equally lacks beef and clarity.

The most bizarre silence is on Northern rail fares. Mr Miliband’s pitch is he will ease a “cost of living crisis” – yet Labour appears ready to accept soaring local fares. How on earth can that work?

I know Labour had a bundle of transport policies – then Ms Creagh replaced Maria Eagle, after the latter crossed swords with my old friend Ed Balls, the Shadow Chancellor.

The suspicion is that Ms Creagh, a neighbour to Mr Balls in West Yorkshire, is willing to bend to a powerful figure keen to avoid costly promises and to fight a narrow election campaign.

Whatever the truth, Northern passengers deserve better than this - in an area neglected for so long and so crucial to economic growth.