Robert Peston

Yeah, well, I was out on the streets of North London last night celebrating Arsenal's return from the wilderness after 22 years.

I'm not sure that Manchesterism is going to play all that well in North London.

given what you might call regional rivalries.

But let's look at what that is supposed to be code for.

What Andy Burnham talks just an enormous amount about, actually weirdly in the way that Boris Johnson used to talk an enormous amount about, and it tells you something about the powers that mayors actually have, is buses.

right, the way that he has taken control of the bus network.

And what he has done, which is quite interesting, is he has control, but it is not conventional nationalization.

What Manchester does is it says, these are the networks, these are the prices that the bus operators have to charge.

You know, these are the timetables, but they don't actually own the buses, right?

The buses are still owned by private operators.

Control is with Manchester, right?

And so when supporters of, you know, because one of the...

charges laid both from within the Labour Party from those who don't want Andy Burnham as leader but also from outside the Labour Party about the great risks that Burnham represents is when he says he wants control for example of

energy, transport, water, people immediately say, oh, my God, you know, that would require the government to spend, I mean, well over £100 billion on nationalising all these services.

And if you just look at the, you know, there are lots of people who would agree that the water industry has been an absolute disaster for the UK.

High prices, you know, polluted rivers.

You know, no...

proper investment for years and years and years.

You know, what is it?

We haven't had a new reservoir since the 1990s.