Corbyn is plotting a reversal of Margaret Thatcher’s privatisation wave of the 1980s and 1990s

Jeremy Corbyn plans to renationalise water companies, paying up to £24bn less than their market value, a leaked internal Labour document reveals.

Pensioners, employees and shareholders whose nest eggs are invested in water companies would lose up to half their value, according to the blueprint circulated among the party’s frontbench members.

The document reveals for the first time the scale of Corbyn’s asset grab: it will pay compensation of less than £20bn for water companies, which are valued at £44bn at conservative market estimates and up to £90bn if debt is included.

The briefing paper states compensation would be a “political process of negotiation with shareholders” and take into account state subsidies, pension fund deficits and “asset stripping since privatisation”. “The final level of