Becoming prime minister isn’t the difficult part, it’s staying one that’s tricky, as a British mobile game taps into the current turmoil in Westminster.
The weather isn’t the only thing that’s been boiling over this summer, with the British political world turned on its head, first by prime minister Sir Keir Starmer announcing he will be stepping down, and now the prospect of a man with a bin on his head becoming an MP.
Former Manchester mayor Andy Burnham certainly has a daunting task ahead of him, considering there’s been six prime ministers in just the last decade, none of who will go down in history as one of the greats.
If you think you could do a better job then there is a mobile game that puts that theory to the test. It’s already been a huge hit on iOS and now it’s available on MacOS and Android as well.
Titled No. 10: Full Confidence, it’s billed as a ‘satirical political survival game’ and is the work of solo developer Benjamin Brewis.
As PM, you are tasked with trying to keep your approval ratings up by appeasing four different factions: your Cabinet, the backbenchers, the media, and the general public.
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However, much like in real-life, you can’t please everybody and decisions you make will curry support from some and disapproval from others. For example, you might be asked to respond to three MPs missing a crucial vote because they were busy playing cards with a trade delegation.
The goal is to last as long as you possibly can before you are ultimately ousted, which happens when approval with any of the four factions hits zero. The current average for players is 2 years and 11 months, which is longer than the last three real prime ministers, and only a little shorter than the reigns of Theresa May and Boris Johnson.
The high score, in real life, is Tony Blair, who lasted for 10 years from 1997 to 2007. David Cameron lasted six years from 2010 to 2016, but all subsequent PMs have only managed three years at most.
Liz Truss was infamously only PM for 50 days, before being replaced by Rishi Sunak. He remained in charge for less than two years, when the Conservative party lost to Labour in 2024.
According to Brewis, the game took him six months to build and launched on the Apple store this May, which is some excellent if accidental timing on his part.
Since the iOS launch the game has gone from strength to strength, reaching number one in the paid Apple App Store and even beating Minecraft for a time.
It helps that the game’s inexpensive at only £2.99, although it does have a ‘special adviser pack’ as an in-game purchase.
The jury’s still out on whether this will make people more sympathetic to former PMs, after giving the job a go themselves, but based on recent form it seems very unlikely the new incumbent will be able to beat the game’s high score in real-life.
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