Going through papers and emails today from my time in the DfE to write The Hollow Men Part II (hopefully tomorrow), I found this doc, link below. It’s only one page.
In autumn 2010, James Frayne organised a wargame in Westminster to consider the likely dynamics of the next five years. I was one of about 20-30 participants.
At the end, I jotted down a summary of conclusions that came out of it.
I thought it may be of interest to some of those who took part in it but I can’t remember who most of them were, so here it is… Pass it on if you were there.
Do leave comments or a scoreboard below.
Of the 17, how many did the Cameroons come out ahead on?
The PDF is HERE.
Dominic Cummings's Blog 
The NHS one is the most telling.
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Makes me think better of this administration – until I recall that Gove and Paterson have just been sacked. For being competent!
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Rough calculation (personal prejudice/survey of one) – 11 out of 17 – scored as follows:
1
0.5
1
0.5
0.5
1
1
0.5 (no terrorism but coalition looking as authoritarian as the previous bunch)
0.5
0.5 (world decidedly not quiet)
0.5
0.5
1
1
0.5
0.5
Not bad and probably better than expected.
Although I approve of some of the more liberal policies – am not convinced by economic (too much leverage, too many imbalances, not enough infrastructure spending to link the east/west regions), environmental (badgers, bees, bio-fuels), or human rights and democratic policies (surveillance, boundaries, lords reform). Also still too fawning to establishment – too much a tool of aristocracy (the sort who say subsidies bad for the rest but fine for landowners and hoarders of capital).
A centre-right liberal (verging on libertarian when it comes to matters of personal choice) republican party would be preferred.
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It’s not a bad list. (From memory, wasn’t there also a timeline chart of key decision points, with branching options? That would make for a more interesting test of the wargame.) Surprised how well Govmt has performed. I give them 7, but it’s difficult to score because a lot of the time things didn’t turn out as expected but the Coalition still got away with it. They do better if you give them a point for bad things not happening than for what they’ve actually done.
Of course, what nobody could have expected on the economic front is that the Coalition would in fact U-Turn, but persuade everyone that they hadn’t, and then get credit for sticking to their guns.
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thats an incredibly interesting sheet.
Its telling of their thought process that they view EU / ECHR / Immigration as just something that has to be managed rather than a real issue that affects people lives.
The Tories seem to be trying to ‘lock in the base’ at the moment via anti ECHR and anti EU rhetoric, but whats astounding is that they just cannot come clean / deal with the immigration issue.
My guess is either the Europhiles has made it clear to them that changing Freedom of Movement is off the table as it could cause an existential crisis for the EU, and so they’ve had political meetings and decided to write off the 5-12% of the pop that will vote for UKIP, as they are unable to get the concessions that would satisfy them from the EU.
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Sadly the government is letting the country down on all.
Its offensive in the extreme to bunch UKIP in with BNP they are not at all similar, and it is the Conservatives/Labour/Liberals who are out of step with the vast majority of the country who want far less immigration.
The economy is faked, low interest rates robbing from savers to prop up the over borrowed, hyping house prices with help to buy etc, lots of Brits displaced from the jobs market by out of control immigration, etc. All the wrong incentives in the system.
Frankly a party that allows such disproportionate numbers of public school output into its senior ranks, and fakes diversity with positive discrimination for females, deserves failure. Where is the diversity for the white working class?
Etc
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Very interesting that right from the outset of this government there has been more concern about being damaged by voters switching to UKIP and BNP than about Labour (which seemingly wasn’t mentioned at all in the wargame). Cameroons will be seen as catastrophically complacent if in their attempts to appease UKIP-minded voters they are outflanked by Labour.
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