Labour’s plan to nationalise BT and provide free broadband, risking the pension pots of millions?

Anyone who imagines nationalising a chunk of BT will lead to a golden age of telecommunications clearly can’t remember the Sixties or Seventies.

When I was a little girl, my grandparents were one of the few households on our street to have a phone. If my mum and dad needed to make a call, they would have to pop over the road.

The phone was clunky with a rotary dial. On the rare occasions it actually rang, I had been trained to answer with: ‘Hello, Middlesbrough 86298!’ It had arrived after a stint on a waiting list – I think Grandad moved up the queue because he had been wounded at Dunkirk.

There was a choice of black or a curdled-cream colour. Discretion was imperative because it was on a crackly party line, so anything juicy soon spread round the whole town.

The costs were expensive by the standards of the time, and unlike today’s youngsters who are glued to mobile phones, my brother and I were firmly forbidden from ever telephoning anyone. If there was a fault, you could wait weeks for it to be fixed.

A brief diversion down memory lane should remind us that, nostalgia aside, nationalised industries were pretty dreadful even decades ago in a much simpler and less technologically advanced economy.

In the infinitely more sophisticated world we live in today, Labour’s plans to expropriate whole swathes of the stock market would be utterly ruinous.

John McDonnell took to the radio yesterday sounding for all the world like a friendly uncle, telling listeners how he wanted to emulate the state-controlled broadband in Korea. He did mean South Korea and not the communist North, but you could be forgiven for wondering.

His plan to seize a chunk of BT is a window into Labour’s instinctively Marxist mindset, and his soothing tones belie the fact this would be larceny on an epic scale.

But he and Jeremy Corbyn (right) are economic illiterates. This sinister duo pose as friends of the workers and champions of ordinary people but they are trying to bribe the electorate with a string of promises which would be risible if they were not so menacing

Billions of pounds of assets would be seized by the state from their legitimate owners.

But he and Jeremy Corbyn are economic illiterates. This sinister duo pose as friends of the workers and champions of ordinary people but they are trying to bribe the electorate with a string of promises which would be risible if they were not so menacing.

Nationalising part of BT would undermine property rights, which have been sacrosanct in this country for centuries. Robust respect for private property is a major reason foreign investors bring their money here. Aside from that, if thrifty Britons fear their savings and investments might be stolen from them at any moment, what incentive do any of us have to save or invest for our future?

On the surface, the ideas proffered by Labour sound attractive. Voters are being tempted with a vision of a workers’ paradise, with four-day weeks for five days’ pay.

Plans are afoot to nationalise water companies, rail, Royal Mail and National Grid as well as a big slice of BT. Not only that, but free shares for the workers are being dangled as a carrot, by forcing large employers to hand over a tenth of their capital to their staff.

Not all of these ideas are fully worked out and some may be quietly dropped. Yet they are all-too-revealing of the philosophy – were that not far too grand a term for what amounts to a programme of thuggish, state-sanctioned theft – at the dark heart of Corbyn’s Labour.

Far from ushering in a workers’ utopia, Labour’s revolutionary programme risks plunging us into economic purgatory. McDonnell and Corbyn are not subtle economic thinkers. They are trying to impose crude socialist dichotomies on a complex and advanced modern economy. They seem oblivious that workers and capitalists are often one and the same people.

Instead, they paint a picture of a world of evil, moustache-twirling capitalists, getting rich off the back of virtuous, down-trodden ordinary folk. But if there ever was such a simplistic division, even in the 19th century when their hero Marx formulated his ideas, there certainly isn’t now.

The BT shareholders who McDonnell wants to rob are not faceless City firms, they are small investors and savers. His plan involves dipping his hand, Fagin-like, and picking the pocket of virtually every British adult with a pension plan.

The BT shareholders who McDonnell wants to rob are not faceless City firms, they are small investors and savers

Bosses’ lobby group the CBI reckons the nationalisation programme could cost £196billion not counting BT, which could add another £100billion to the bill.

Labour disputes the calculations, but whatever the precise numbers, the tab will be huge. McDonnell says he will fund this by issuing government bonds or IOUs. These will have to be paid back by taxpayers now and in the future.

Thanks to the Tories putting our finances back into decent shape after the financial crisis, the UK is seen as a good credit risk.

At the moment interest rates are low. But under a socialist regime, Britain’s credit rating would be at risk of a downgrade – it is already on a negative outlook from agency Moody’s – and the costs could rise.

There is another question, though. Certainly, there have been some abuses of capitalism, including excessive pay at the top and tax avoidance.

But does anyone seriously think that a bunch of Labour apparatchiks and their party-appointed stooges can run a highly complex business like BT’s broadband arm better than its current managers?

In a worst-case scenario, Labour could create mayhem in the economy with a run on the pound, a steep rise in the costs of government borrowing and capital flight as overseas investors flee. Even in the best case, their nationalisation plans would be a monumental waste of time and money.

We are still the fifth most prosperous economy in the world, despite being a relatively small nation. Vote Labour, and you vote to put that in jeopardy for the sake of a communist pipe dream.