A certain inability to understand what people are capable of seems in evidence here:

Workers must be given a right to do their jobs from home, Labour has demanded as it piled pressure on the government not to let its consultation on flexible working be kicked into the long grass.

Hmm:

“Boss, I wanna work from home!”

“Tim, you’re a waiter.”

“Ah, yes, bit of a problem that….”

It is not possible for all jobs to be done from home. Not even that bit where the forks are polished is going to work that way. So, the actual demand is:

Rayner said: “As restrictions lift and we adjust to a ‘new normal’, we need a new deal for working people. As a starting point, this must mean the right to flexible working – not just the right to ask for flexibility – and a duty on employers to accommodate this unless there is a reason a certain job can’t be done flexibly.

So each and every discussion about whether a job can - or will - be done flexibly is going to be a negotiation between worker and employer. Because that’s where that discussion of whether it is possible or not is going to take place, between those two parties.

Which is where the discussion is going to be anyway, whether Angela Rayner gets her new law passed or not. Because that’s where discussions about the details of working arrangements take place right now, always have done, always will.

What happens to the wider economy is the summed and aggregate outcome of all of those individual decisions and negotiations. Rather like - well, exactly the same as - that wider economy anyway, it’s the summed and aggregate outcome of the 65 million of us making arrangements, taking decisions and negotiating with each other.

Folks, you know, adult human beings and all that, are entirely capable of having such conversations about who will do what in which manner. A goodly part of the art of governance is in leaving ‘em be to do so.