The big goal in modern physics is the Grand Unified Theory, which will successfully explain how all the forces they have discovered work together. Nobody has come up with such a theory yet, but nonetheless they do know quite a lot about what kind of theory will be needed. So they can easily dismiss a lot of idle speculation. I think voters are in much the same position when it comes to casting their votes. Nobody knows what the best policies are to run the country.
But some options obviously won't work. The best example was one election where out of the blue a party called the Natural Law Party appeared and was able to find an impressive slate of candidates. I can't remember the details of their other policies, but the eye catching one was a commitment to achieving widespread levitation for individuals. Flying is certainly a benefit that most of us would consider to be desirable, but I doubt very much even a convincing win for the Natural Law Party would have enabled them to succeed in their objective. Their credibility was lost even before their deposits were.
What would a successful programme for Britain look like? Basically it starts with the credibility of the organisation behind it. Only the big three have the depth of experience and the infrastructure behind them to actually put a cabinet together. The Greens are coming along but I don't think they are there yet. UKIP had potential as well - but its history meant it never got that far. The Brexit Party is a bit of an unknown quantity and looks to me to be a PR exercise rather than a serious political project. I'll keep an open mind on it though. We don't exactly have a huge number of political parties to choose from, so it is best not to be too sniffy about new offerings.
The other thing that any political programme worth considering needs is some kind of aim in mind for the kind of Britain it is trying to create. On this score Labour, the Lib Dems, the Greens and the Conservatives are all in the running.
But we are talking a practical programme for a future government, so we need to delve into the manifesto for what the actual plans are. Labour's Green Industrial Revolution is a great starting point for a new approach to the direction the country is going, but what are its plans for the services it currently runs? The answer, is that there are plenty of them. The National Health Service is one of Labour's great achievements and is in many ways already the ideal solution to the problem it was set up to solve. It sounds like it remains safe in Labour's hands and they have plans for a modest expansion. This is all to the good. Other public services have received a great deal of attention. There is going to be a presumption in favour of direct public provision rather than contracting out to the private sector. This is a good corrective to the current arrangement. I hope it doesn't go too far the other way. There are things that the private sector provides with such efficiency that it makes no sense to do it any other way.
I like the details of what Labour plans to improve. Near to home care is a good example of the way the party is thinking. It is obviously more cost effective to provide care in centres of excellence where equipment and expertise can be brought together with large numbers of patients to optimise efficiency all round. But this efficiency comes at a big cost in terms of disruption to the lives of the sick people being cared for. The whole point of a socialised health service is to be able to do things that benefit patients even when they aren't strictly speaking cost-effective. This is just one example of many good ideas for improving the service offered. It is high time we started thinking about the quality of care a bit more and the cost a bit less.
Of course the obvious response is that you can't spend money you haven't got and resources are not unlimited. To which a very good reply is, well actually we have got quite a bit of money and we aren't that short of resources. We have to set our goals ambitiously. Having said all that, you can't accuse this manifesto of lacking ambition. It is supposed to be a blueprint for a plan of action and it could have done with a bit more clarity about priorities. We can do a lot more than we are doing now. We should be doing a lot more than we are doing now. And this manifesto has a great list of worthy objectives. But we can't do absolutely everything all at once and it would have been better to have been clear about that.
But there are a lot of initiatives that pass muster as cost cutting as well as improving people's lives. I liked the emphasis on preventative action by the state - sugar tax, tackling obesity, measles vaccinations etc. All good common sense stuff and not especially troubling to the public purse in the long run.
An eye catching proposal, to me at any rate, is the plan to create a national generic drug manufacturer to make cheap versions of expensive patented drugs. This could have a revolutionary impact on drug pricing and is the kind of thinking that is needed to produce dramatic rather than incremental improvements in public healthcare provision. I don't know if it would work. It could be a white elephant. It could be a major innovation. It could be neither of those things, but it might well provide spinoff benefits that nobody foresaw and which justify the expense on their own. The only way to find out is to try. I think we should. There are some things that can only be achieved by boldness.
There is a similar boldness to plans to increase the provision of educational opportunities. In the world we are moving into all but the most fiddly and the most brain intensive tasks can be done more cheaply by technology. The countries that will win will be those that get their education systems right. I don't know if Labour's is right - but only something this fundamental is likely to work. The status quo will not be an option.
I always appreciate it when parties are prepared to steal their opponents good ideas. That's the sign of an open mind. So I was glad to see that my favourite initiative of David Cameron has been shamelessly adopted by Labour. Democratic control of the police is here to stay. I'd have been even happier if the text hadn't been lightly peppered with criticism of the Tories. This isn't a programme to beat your political opponents with. This is an agenda you can only sell if you really believe in it.
Do I believe in it? I am not sure. I want boldness, and I want change. This offers plenty of both, Maybe it's just a few steps too far. I did wonder a few times when I was reading it if it was intended not so much as an agenda for a government but more as a statement of Labour's values. The idea may not be to win the election now, it may be aiming to win the argument in time for the next one.
But I want to give Labour the benefit of the doubt. Its programme in 1945 still stands out as one of the great achievements of British history. Perhaps there simply is no way to go forward without taking some risk.
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