After weeks of incandescent rage about northern rail services, the truth - or at least part of it - is finally out.

We really are being taken for mugs by the government.

While campaigns have been raging to save much-needed rail links, improve many others and more recently to end the current paralysis of the network, behind the scenes transport officials in London have long been hiding the truth - and by their own admission, coming up with ‘myths’ to distract us from the reality.

An explosive email trail between senior civil servants, obtained by Wigan MP Lisa Nandy and now by the M.E.N, reveals the government knew THREE years ago that it would be pulling the Southport to Manchester Airport service, despite continuing to avoid giving straight answers to the public as recently as this year.

Officials ignored warnings from rail user groups and MPs about the chaos that would help to unleash in May, instead discussing among themselves how to publicly justify a decision that had been taken long before.

But that is just the beginning.

In among the discussions between officials lie the true views of those overseeing northern trains, including the fiasco that hit us a few weeks ago.

In February 2016, a Transport for Greater Manchester official emailed a civil servant at the Department for Transport (DfT) asking what they should tell people in Southport, Hyde and Saddleworth, who had been asking questions about the future of the service.

They go on to list a number of proposed ‘lines’ to give to the public, including that no changes were expected before December last year.

Their planned response made no mention of the fact that in reality, the Southport to Manchester Airport route was to be scrapped and a new service sent to Victoria instead - leaving many people to change trains on overcrowded platforms at Salford Crescent or stranded on the wrong side of Manchester, if they were lucky enough to get on a train in the first place.

The DfT official responded: “A classic handling strategy. Propagate the myth that the service is closing entirely, then people will rejoice at the news that it is merely being diverted to Victoria.

“Yours cynically, etc etc, [name].”

Cynical is the word.

Emails show officials have long known full well that the route was not being included in the contract being put out by government.

Repeatedly they discuss their justifications for routing the service to Victoria instead, variously saying that other places had more people wanting to get to the airport than the places such as Wigan on the Southport line - and even that Victoria is ‘on the up’.

“It will increasingly be a place that people want to go to,” argued one, presumably from their office in Whitehall.

In August 2015, one official writes to another, regarding a public response they were about to send out to another concerned inquiry: “Let’s see if my people in the north can identify some evidence to support the view that more people want to go from the airport to places other than Southport.

“It would strengthen the letter if we can point to something specific.”

Even as the public and MPs were trying to get straight answers, officials knew full well that the service was going.

Because that’s what they had put in the contract.

As a DfT civil servant points out to another in one email sent in October 2015: “Diversion of the Southports to Victoria is a pretty much inevitable consequence of our specification.”

They go on to suggest contracting a route from Southport to Leeds as a ‘sop’ to an area that was about to lose its link with the airport.

But they weren’t about to admit any of this to the public.

As they discussed their reasoning for scrapping the service, officials repeatedly pointed out in that this plan was not public knowledge, despite messages of concern from rail user groups and MPs.

Indeed as recently as February this year, transport minister Jo Johnson wrote to Lisa Nandy claiming Northern bosses were still working on potential extra services.

“I completely understand your concerns about Southport to Manchester Piccadilly rail services,” he added, after what must have been the umpteenth time she pointed out that axing and rerouting the trains, especially when electrification projects were being delayed, would lead to chaos.

Perhaps Mr Johnson understands her concerns now.

Ms Nandy told the M.E.N: “The idea they didn’t know the current chaos was coming is nonsense.

“They knew they were doing things that were making it worse and they were so arrogant they couldn’t be bothered to listen.”

Or, as she said to the Prime Minister regarding the emails: “Officials describe key northern routes as valueless, discuss classic handling strategies for Members of Parliament, discuss whether to throw a sop to northern passenger groups and debate whether to propagate myths in order to divert public attention from agreed planned route closures.

“Will the Prime Minister explain to this house why she has withheld this key information from us and from the public or is she so incompetent she literally has not got a clue what is going on in her own government?”

In response Theresa May said the government did not respond to leaked emails it had not seen.

She didn’t even get that excuse right though, as they were not leaked.

They were released under the Freedom of Information Act by her own government.

A DfT spokesman said: “These emails are nothing to do with the current timetabling issues being endured by Northern.

“The emails are more than two years old and relate to the wider design of the Northern franchise and deciding which trains were most needed to best serve the passengers in the region.

“The excerpts quoted relate solely to a decision over whether trains from Southport would stop at Manchester Piccadilly or Manchester Victoria and have no further implications beyond that individual route.

“It is deeply regrettable that a DfT official used inappropriate language and that matter is being looked at.”

“Leading a world-class railway that creates opportunities for people and businesses,” reads the footer below many of the internal emails from DfT officials.

The north will doubtless form its own judgement on that.