Boris promises an extra 50,000 nurses – but where’s he going to find them?

This election campaign has long since descended into a contest to see who can spray around the largest sums of cash. So it should come as no great surprise that the Conservatives promised an eye-catching initiative to outdo Labour on nurse numbers. Jeremy Corbyn wants to provide an extra 20,000 new nurses but Boris has now promised an extra 50,000 – topping the Labour leader (until tomorrow morning, of course, when Corbyn can be more or less guaranteed to up his offer to 100,000 nurses).

We seem to be heading for the NHS equivalent of a military state. Instead of seeing people in military uniforms on every train, bus and street corner, we will have a Benny Hill-esque society where every other person is in a nurses’ uniform. But are the numbers remotely credible? If you paid 50,000 nurses £50,000 a year the bill would come to £2.5 billion a year.