So there we some good things in #LabourManifesto19 today. Good stuff on flexible working. Good stuff for private renters. Good stuff on animal welfare. Some good things on public spending. Why, then, am I so worried? Well. /THREAD
I think my own concern would focus on governance. Yes, you can concentrate on cost. A lot of these figures look like a blurry Polaroid shot of the Yeti. But more important is the capacity side.
Let's look at admin. The Education section looks like - bring Academies and Free schools back under recreated LEAs, integrate admissions, create a single legal order for all schools, replace Ofsted (in a v offhand comment), abolish SATs. Er, yeah - right.
Then let's look at the capital side. There is simply nothing like the construction and engineering capacity to even make a start on this, esp if you're not continuing with FoM. It's overheated as it is in labour and materials.
This manifesto looks like a Directional State without the direction. In the public policy literature, our state currently looks either 'hollowed out' or 'networked', not Directional. You can't just make it Directional by saying so.
The Left correctly divines the Hollow Crown that they want to wear, but it doesn't have much of a diagnosis of how to fill it - how to wear the crown. Here's Rhodes (1997) on what the 'neoliberal' state has become. The leverage has only got looser over the years. 
What I think a lot about Corbynism is that it is the New Left without Marxism - without structure. So it has no analysis of *power*, only conspiracy and corruption - blunting its ability to deliver change. See Bolton and Pitts, 'Corbynism: A Critical Approach'.
I can tell you now that - as the Left rightly argues - the British state looks exactly like a Hollow Crown. Insourcing local govt. Are you kidding? Local govt can barely maintain its statutory functions. Insourcing NHS PFI. Yes, but how and at what cost?
They are like a medieval faction in the War of the Roses. They lack a theory of the state. They correctly divine the problem of the King and his councillors, but they have only the most watery vision of what else to do.
There are whole sections of the British state that can't even do feedback, and - stripped out by austerity and then Brexit - can't even monitor the data they're supposed to be using for targeting. Labour are right about this. But their own true divination undermines their case.
Is the British state really going to do all this? Of course it isn't. But then you have to ask yourself - how much nastier will the populists who then appear and fill the next vacuum really be? /END
