If I were PMPlay

You sit in Number 10.

Every UK government department is live on a dashboard tab, staffed by an AI civil service with real objectives and real published data. You are the Prime Minister. You don't move sliders to run the country — you direct officials, hear what they advise, and decide.

What makes it different: the consequences aren't scripted. They're reasoned by the agents themselves, grounded in each department's actual numbers — so the trade-offs are explainable, arguable, and occasionally inconvenient.

The loop

  1. 1

    Observe

    Every department has a dashboard of real objectives and real published metrics — NHS waiting lists, teacher recruitment, borrowing. This is where things actually stand.

  2. 2

    Direct

    Tell a department what you want in plain English: “recruit 6,500 more teachers”, “open the NHS around the clock”. Its officials work the idea up into a costed policy.

  3. 3

    Negotiate

    The Treasury pushes back on anything expensive. Other departments tell you what it means for them. Nobody agrees on everything.

  4. 4

    Commit

    Decisions land in your box. Approve, reject, or take a partial offer — and spend political capital when you overrule the Treasury.

  5. 5

    Watch

    The clock keeps running. Your policy bends the projection away from the do-nothing baseline, and the second-order effects come back to you.

Time, and how it runs out

You choose the pace, once
Before you start, you pick how long you want to play — 15 to 60 minutes. The game clock is paced so that time lands exactly on the 2029 general election. There is no pause button, and no fast-forward: the clock simply stops when you step away, and nothing happens behind your back.
The election ends it
The countdown in the header is the real deadline. You start behind: the government you inherit is projected to lose, so another term has to be earned rather than merely not squandered. Win, and you earn another parliament. Lose, and the run is over. The result is computed from the state of the nation you actually left behind — there are no scripted defeats, and the dashboards always show you exactly which numbers are dragging.

Three things worth knowing

State of the Nation — the composite verdict on your government, top right, with the days remaining until polling day. Next to it, “What voters think” shows the approval rating underneath it, broken down by issue and by region.

Political capital is finite. Approving what the Treasury already backs is cheap. Overruling them costs you. Run it down and your authority to act comes into question.

Everything is discussable. Any panel with a Discuss button opens a conversation with the officials responsible for it. If you're unsure what a number means or what to do about it, ask them.

The civil service is played by AI. The data is real.

Take office