ANDY BURNHAM’S pledge to renationalise the railways was met with scepticism from campaign group Trade Unionists Against the European Union (TUAEU) yesterday.

In an attempt to counter the huge support for Jeremy ­Corbyn’s Labour leadership campaign, Mr Burnham said on Tuesday that he supported a model which would allow the state to bid for franchises against private companies.

But TUAEU spokesman Brian Denny drew attention to Mr Burnham’s support for the EU and said that rail renationalisation was illegal under European law.

Furthermore, other services such Royal Mail could not be renationalised either, Mr Denny said, since that privatisation followed an EU directive in the first place. 

Rail union TSSA leader Manuel Cortes also said that the bidding process advocated by Mr Burnham was “costly and unnecessary” and would likely result in the privatisation of Caledonian MacBrayne ferries, part-owned by the Scottish government.

And Mr Denny warned that the looming EU-US trade deal TTIP would “give big trans­national companies the opportunity to provide services at present in the public sector.”

TUAEU launched its website www.tuaeu.co.uk earlier this week to raise awareness of the EU’s undemocratic and neo­liberal nature and challenge pro-EU arguments from both the left and big business. 

There has long been a strand of the labour movement that has been critical of the EU, which has included the likes of Tony Benn and Bob Crow.

But Mr Denny said that it had always been ignored by the media and political elite.