G OLDEN HANDSHAKES ? Banned. Payment in stock options? Not allowed. Your company has a pension deficit and no binding plan to fix it? No bonus for you. Britain’s bosses were given a preview of life under a Labour government on November 27th when the party published a report laying out options for its executive-pay policy.

Bonuses should be “discouraged” and reserved only for “carefully specified and extraordinary performance”, according to the report, which was commissioned by Labour’s economic team and written by friendly academics. Any extra money would be subject to approval not just by shareholders but by all “stakeholders”, including workers and even customers. In general, pay should be in cash, rather than complicated incentive plans.

Some of the proposals have been seen elsewhere. In Switzerland, often thought of as a bankers’ paradise, voters backed draconian curbs on executive pay in a referendum in 2013. Golden handshakes were forbidden. Company managers can now go to prison for breaking these rules. Legal obligations to disclose pay ratios and name high earners, which Labour is considering, are common. America recently passed a law requiring publicly traded companies to disclose how much a chief executive is paid compared with their median worker. Shareholders in Britain already have some say over executive pay.

Nonetheless, argues Alexander Pepper, a professor of management at the London School of Economics, Labour’s ideas are “extraordinarily bold” and would go far beyond most international practice. For instance, no country pays executives exclusively in cash, he says; only Japan comes vaguely close.

Giving customers a say on company bosses’ remuneration would be unique. It would also be extraordinarily tricky. How would the government weigh the rights of the many stakeholders of a supermarket, say, from a shelf-stacker to a shareholder to a shopper who has just bought a bunch of bananas? The paper’s proposals are vague. Customers could be identified through their membership of loyalty schemes, for instance. The rules would apply to all large companies, defined as businesses with more than 250 employees or turnover of more than £36m ($46m). In effect, this would subject big private companies to scrutiny over pay that was similar to that faced by firms listed on the stock exchange.

Promising to crack down on executive pay is generally popular. Earlier this year a poll by Britain Thinks found that 39% of the public approved of another Labour policy, to impose a 20:1 maximum pay ratio between the highest- and lowest-paid workers in any company bidding for government contracts. Only 8% thought it was a bad idea.

Under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn and the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, Labour has long promised to “democratise” the economy. As it gradually fills in the blanks of its programme for government, it is becoming clear quite how radical their plans may be.