Don’t Hate the Politicians, Hate the Game

July 15, 2025

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Don’t Hate the Politicians, Hate the Game

Over the past few hundred years, our society and democracy have developed and changed beyond recognition. However, our voting system has failed to keep pace. We believe that First Past the Post has no place in a modern democracy, and should be replaced by a system of Proportional Representation. If you agree, sign the petition. If you want to know why, read on:

Minority rule

The idea of a minority ruling over the majority goes against our most basic ideas about democracy. But with First Past the Post, it's the norm. For about 90% of the time since 1935 we've had single-party 'majority' governments, but not one of them had the support of a majority of voters. The Conservatives currently hold a majority of seats with just 43.6% of the votes. In the 2019 election they gained an extra 48 seats despite an increase of only 1.2% of the vote share. Almost since the first general election, politicians who most of us didn't vote for and don't agree with have had the power to govern the UK however they like.

Proportional Representation means majority rule, not minority rule. With PR, any government must have a majority of votes behind it - so in order to govern, a party needs to either work collaboratively with other parties, or persuade most of us to vote for it.

Demand Real Democracy

The idea of a minority ruling over the majority goes against our most basic ideas about democracy. But with First Past the Post, it’s the norm. For about 90% of the time since 1935 we’ve had single-party ‘majority’ governments, but not one of them had the support of a majority of voters. The Conservatives currently hold a majority of seats with just 43.6% of the votes. In the 2019 election they gained an extra 48 seats despite an increase of only 1.2% of the vote share. Almost since the first general election, politicians who most of us didn’t vote for and don’t agree with have had the power to govern the UK however they like.The idea of a minority ruling over the majority goes against our most basic ideas about democracy. But with First Past the Post, it’s the norm. For about 90% of the time since 1935 we’ve had single-party ‘majority’ governments, but not one of them had the support of a majority of voters. The Conservatives currently hold a majority of seats with just 43.6% of the votes. In the 2019 election they gained an extra 48 seats despite an increase of only 1.2% of the vote share. Almost since the first general election, politicians who most of us didn’t vote for and don’t agree with have had the power to govern the UK however they like.The idea of a minority ruling over the majority goes against our most basic ideas about democracy. But with First Past the Post, it’s the norm. For about 90% of the time since 1935 we’ve had single-party ‘majority’ governments, but not one of them had the support of a majority of voters. The Conservatives currently hold a majority of seats with just 43.6% of the votes. In the 2019 election they gained an extra 48 seats despite an increase of only 1.2% of the vote share. Almost since the first general election, politicians who most of us didn’t vote for and don’t agree with have had the power to govern the UK however they like.The idea of a minority ruling over the majority goes against our most basic ideas about democracy. But with First Past the Post, it’s the norm. For about 90% of the time since 1935 we’ve had single-party ‘majority’ governments, but not one of them had the support of a majority of voters. The Conservatives currently hold a majority of seats with just 43.6% of the votes. In the 2019 election they gained an extra 48 seats despite an increase of only 1.2% of the vote share. Almost since the first general election, politicians who most of us didn’t vote for and don’t agree with have had the power to govern the UK however they like.The idea of a minority ruling over the majority goes against our most basic ideas about democracy. But with First Past the Post, it’s the norm. For about 90% of the time since 1935 we’ve had single-party ‘majority’ governments, but not one of them had the support of a majority of voters. The Conservatives currently hold a majority of seats with just 43.6% of the votes. In the 2019 election they gained an extra 48 seats despite an increase of only 1.2% of the vote share. Almost since the first general election, politicians who most of us didn’t vote for and don’t agree with have had the power to govern the UK however they like.The idea of a minority ruling over the majority goes against our most basic ideas about democracy. But with First Past the Post, it’s the norm. For about 90% of the time since 1935 we’ve had single-party ‘majority’ governments, but not one of them had the support of a majority of voters. The Conservatives currently hold a majority of seats with just 43.6% of the votes. In the 2019 election they gained an extra 48 seats despite an increase of only 1.2% of the vote share. Almost since the first general election, politicians who most of us didn’t vote for and don’t agree with have had the power to govern the UK however they like.

Our brilliant volunteer, Paul Tait, has taken a bold and original approach to explaining British politics — not through lectures or jargon, but through a metaphorical card game that lays bare the logic behind how our political system really works. In Don’t Hate the Politicians, Hate the Game, Paul argues that most politicians aren’t irrational or evil — they’re just playing a game where the rules reward tactics we often find frustrating or cynical. If we want different outcomes, he says, we need to change the game itself. Prepare for a thought-provoking take that challenges how we think about power, politics, and what it takes to truly change the system.

The great game

You walk into a casino. There’s a blackjack table, a poker table, and a roulette table, but your eye is drawn to an ornate, almost quaint side door.

It leads to an enormous room, filled with smoke and smelling of old wine, where a strange old game is being played. A game with higher stakes than all the others.

The price to get in? £10,000, minimum.

In the room, you can see men and women in suits circulating around tables, where normal people sit in jeans or shorts or trackies, looking like they’ve just been dragged off the street.

It’s a team game. Your team assigns you to a table. It’s a game of persuasion. You’re trying to win over the people sitting at that table. If you can win over more people at that table than anyone else, you win the table.

It’s not about winning over the most people in the room. It’s about winning the most tables. Whichever team wins the most tables wins the game.

Simple, right?

The rules of the game dictate the most effective strategies:

Teams should only spend effort on the tables that they can realistically win
Teams should ignore tables they’re unlikely to win or unlikely to lose
Teams benefit more from getting a lot of support in a smaller group of tables, rather than a bit of support across all the tables
Because of all of this, teams should focus on winning over undecided people at competitive tables

Now, if you’re joining this game as a player, you need to bear in mind these strategies:

If you want to win the game, you need to join a big, well-established team that has a good chance of winning, rather than a small team
In order to be accepted into a team, you need to convince them that you are totally loyal and will put the team first
You ideally want to be assigned to an uncompetitive table you will easily win
You need to make people more likely to choose you than the other players; so, it’s not just about looking good, it’s about making the other teams seem bad
In fact, it doesn’t really matter to you that some people don’t care and don’t support anyone — what matters is just that more people support you than anyone else working your table

You may recognise this game. It’s British politics – what Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli called “the great game”. The players are MPs and candidates. The people at the tables are possible voters in their constituencies. The teams are political parties.

This game is being played every day. The stakes are high. The rules are archaic. One team usually wins. But everybody loses.

The myth of the stupid politician

Politicians are the worst, right? They’re stupid, greedy, selfish, lying, corrupt, cowardly, out-of-touch elitists, aren’t they? Over half the public don’t trust the government, politicians, and political parties. And politicians need to do better, don’t they? The Guardian wrote in 2023 that “Our politicians must do better. […] They have to change, however difficult that may be.” Or as a Marvel superhero recently said to a politician: “You’ve got to do better, senator!”

We shake our heads and sigh. We wonder how these are the best leaders our nation could come up with.

I understand this line of thinking. But it misses the point.

Most politicians are not stupid. Most politicians are not evil. Most politicians are not illogical.

They’re actually being very logical. They’re just playing the game according to the rules. They have to.

Why politicians don’t “just do the right thing”

Now I expect at least one person reading this might be thinking “well, Paul, I get that, but why can’t politicians stop acting like it’s a game and just do the right thing? People’s lives are at stake!”

They can’t.

Let’s say there’s two kinds of players. There’s players who play to win, who will do whatever it takes to win and who will follow all the best strategies to win the game. Then there are players who “play the right way”. They think they shouldn’t just be working undecided people at competitive tables. They shouldn’t be saying the opposing teams are bad. They should be honest, treat everyone respectfully, and spend the same amount of time on each person in the room. It’s only fair.

Over time, some of these players who “play the right way” lose the game. They are more likely to lose than those who play to win. When they lose the game, they are replaced by new players. Again, some of these new players play to win, and some “play the right way”. But over time, almost all the people left playing will be those who play to win. Over time, those well-established teams will learn only to accept new players who do what they’re told and play to win.

This is politics. It’s natural selection. Evolve, or die. Follow the winning strategy, or lose. It’s that simple. The players might not like it. They might even hate it. But they can’t afford to deviate. Why do most of the Republicans in the US follow whatever Trump says? They play to win. Those who weren’t willing to follow Trump have lost. It’s as simple as that. There will always be exceptions, people who manage to stay in the game even when playing “the right way”, but these are exceptions. On average, the game rewards those who follow the winning strategies, and over time, only these people are left playing.

If you just “play the right way”, you will lose the game. And then you might be “right”, but you’re also a loser — and out of the game for good. We might act shocked when someone in the TV show The Traitors callously lies to someone, or even backstabs them. But it’s a game, and this is how you win.

Changing the game

So, what to do? We need to stop blaming the players and teams for acting based on the rules of the game. It’s not their fault. We need to stop getting angry at the winners for doing whatever it takes to win. It’s pointless.

George Washington in his 1796 Farewell Address urged America to avoid becoming polarised around two parties. Barack Obama in his 2009 Inaugural Address vowed to move politics beyond partisan polarisation. Both failed entirely, not for lack of caring, but because both failed to recognise that these systemic political problems required systemic political solutions. We can’t lecture the players to act differently. We need to change the rules.

Don’t hate the player, hate the game.

Change the game, to change the players.

Same game, new rules

Imagine now you find yourself in the same back room, but this time the game rules have been changed.

This time, the teams need to win over as many people as possible across the whole room. And then they need to join together with other teams by finding compromises between them to win, so that between them, they have the support of most people in the room.

The rules of the game dictate the most effective strategies:

Teams need to try and appeal to as many people as possible, rather than just a select few
Small teams can win by appealing to a specific slice of the room but then joining forces with bigger teams who they can work with
Teams need to be able to collaborate and compromise with other teams, rather than criticising all of them

This is Proportional Representation, a core design principle of most countries’ political game that means that the winners should command majority support from the whole room, rather than just key people at competitive tables.

Only by changing the game can we change the behaviour of the players.

Let’s change the game.

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