LONDON (AP) — Britain’s main opposition Labour Party promised Thursday to radically expand public spending and state ownership if it wins the Dec. 12 election, trying to close a persistent opinion-poll gap with the governing Conservatives.

The party said a Labour government would nationalize Britain’s railways, energy utilities and postal system, cap rents, hike the minimum wage and abolish university tuition fees.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn called the platform a “manifesto of hope.” Critics called it a pipe dream.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson pushed for Britain to hold the December election, which is taking place more than two years early, in hopes of winning a majority and breaking Britain’s political impasse over Brexit. All 650 seats in the House of Commons are up for grabs.

Labour’s ambitious manifesto is an attempt to shift the focus of the campaign from Britain’s stalled departure from the European Union and onto the country’s fraying social fabric, stressed after a decade of austerity measures under Conservative-led governments.

The platform unveiled Thursday at a rally in Birmingham, central England, revives policies of nationalization and central government control that have been jettisoned by both Conservative and Labour governments since the 1980s.

“Yes, it is a radical manifesto,” Corbyn said. “But when you travel around this country and you talk to people, radical answers are what’s necessary.”

Labour promised to build 150,000 new public housing units a year and to create hundreds of thousands of “green jobs” to combat climate change by expanding renewable energy and cutting carbon emissions.

The party also says it will part-privatize telecoms provider BT and bring free broadband internet access to every home and business in Britain.

The costly new policies would funded by raising taxes on the wealthy, including a higher corporation tax, a windfall tax on oil and gas companies and an income tax increase for those earning more than 80,000 pounds ($104,000) a year.

Johnson’s Conservatives accused Labour of reckless spending and outmoded socialist ideas.

“None of this has any economic credibility whatever,” said Johnson, who labeled Labour’s policies “ruinous.”

The Conservatives, however, also are promising more money for infrastructure, health care and public services if they win, a major change of policy after years of backing public spending cuts.

Paul Johnson, who heads the Institute for Fiscal Studies, an economic think tank, called the scale of Labour’s financial promises “colossal” and said the idea it could be paid for without raising taxes on most workers was “simply not credible.”

Business groups reacted more cautiously to Labour’s plans.

British Chambers of Commerce chief Adam Marshall said businesses would “welcome proposals to reform skills funding, upgrade our failing infrastructure and review business rates.”

“But command and control isn’t the way,” he said. “Excessive intervention in business governance and sweeping tax rises would suppress innovation and smother growth.”

Edwin Morgan, director of policy at the Institute of Directors, warned that “Labour’s measures on business risk being too much stick and not enough carrot.”