The gap between Labour’s claims and reality grows ever wider. After cynically abandoning their manifesto promise to abolish tuition fees, which they used to increase their youth vote at the election, Labour is now proposing to bring vast swathes of the private sector back under public ownership by 2027 if the party wins the next election. At their party conference this week, Labour pledged to seize control of up to £200 billion of PFI (Private Finance Initiative) contracts, running schools, hospitals and prisons. This is an expansion of Labour’s nationalisation plans, which already include taking back railways, water and power, despite the country having no funds to pay for or maintain them. The PFI schemes used money from investors to pay for essential infrastructure up front. For example, the deals originally financed £11.8 billion in building hospitals in England, but will cost £79 billion to pay back over 31 years – equivalent to almost £4,000 per household in Britain. It was also estimated that they were already costing the NHS £2 billion a year in repayments by 2015. But, while there is an argument against PFI schemes, because they are too expensive and have already pushed many hospitals into special measures, Labour’s solution will only make things worse. The irony is that PFI schemes, though dreamed up under John Major’s Government, boomed under Labour from 1997 onwards, becoming its most favoured way to conjure up money out of thin air. Now Labour proposes to renationalise these projects, paying government bonds in lieu of cash to the investors they lured in, who will be severely out of pocket. The potential backlash will be frightening. Business leaders have warned investors will be “running for the hills” and, worse, the government will no longer be trusted as a borrower. It’s a suicidal idea, which could sharply bring the country to its knees. And once again, it proves how financially illiterate Labour is. Meanwhile, writing off existing student tuition fees would increase government debt by £20 billion by 2050, while abolishing them for new students would add £11 billion a year to our spending. Labour would destroy this country and we'd be in the hands of the IMF in no time.