Whether or not the ideas are “half baked” isn’t perhaps the main concern (all manifestos contain half baked ideas: the civil service/government lawyers/Parliament turn them into something edible). My main problem is the lack of any real sense of which of them are priorities.
You can only do so much as a radical government in five years. Radical change takes effort and attention to do competently. There is only so much attention and so much time.
And most of your time and attention will be used up in crises you haven’t foreseen and the routine grind of government.
As Nye Bevan said, “the language of priorities is the religion of socialism”. But I can’t see much sign of that language in Labour messaging.
