For the past week, I’ve been feeding UK party manifestos into the politics management game Democracy 4, to simulate their results five years on … Are you ready to be dismayed?hether they are called manifestos or contracts, the documents published by political parties ahead of an election are rather less substantial than their many pages would suggest.
The Conservatives, Labour and Liberal Democrats all put the economy front and centre, referencing the cost of living crisis and the state of the nation’s finances in the first paragraphs of their manifestos. It’s no surprise, as Tom Waters, associate director of the IFS,: “The UK has fallen from being one of the fastest growers prior to the Great Recession, to one of the weakest performers.”
Each turn in Democracy 4 advances the timeline by three months, and the parties’ policies have an immediate impact. Increased investment in the NHS and policing saw health levels rise and crime levels fall; all three parties also saw reduced poverty. Perhaps the good times are finally coming to the UK.
In Democracy 4, at least, it appears big business is only ever a hair away from leaving the UK if its income is threatened. The dynamic sheds a little light on the Conservatives and Labour’s tax policies: to have a hope of bringing down the mountain of government debt, whoever comes to power can’t risk a single big business leaving the country and stepping out of the reach of HMRC. The country is only one misstep away from entering a downward economic spiral ending in a debt crisis.