The babelfish option

If a week is a long time in politics then ten years must be akin to the lifetime of the solar system. That's how long ago that a slight majority of British voters opted for the UK to leave the European Union. The polling today shows a roughly 60/30 split reckoning it was the wrong decision. Oops. I wonder if that's because Britain is poorer, or because there's an obvious threat from Putin and no help to be had from the mad cadre of posturing jocks now in power in Washington?

Oh well, no sense in crying over spilt milk. We can still get a kind of twisted fun out of the situation. What could be more British than laughing like a drain while circling the drain? And now our (well, my) fellow Europeans in France, Germany and Poland can get in on the act, as I'm releasing app versions of my gamebook Can You Brexit? to mark the 10th anniversary of the referendum.

(Apologies to the many EU countries I haven't done translations for, but even with the turbocharging of Claude Code I only have so much time. Still, as the game runs in a browser anyone can play it in their native language just by enabling Google Translate.)

Brexit: Können Sie Großbritannien zusammenhalten? is the German version:

Sie sind Premierminister des Vereinigten Königreichs, und der Brexit läuft. Ihnen bleiben exakt zwei Jahre, um eine über vier Jahrzehnte gewachsene Allianz rückabzuwickeln. Und das ist noch die einfachste Aufgabe. Ihr Kabinett gilt als schwer steuerbar, Ihre Partei befindet sich in fortgeschrittener Selbstzerlegung, und das Land ist in dieser Frage weiterhin zuverlässig gespalten.

Schaffen Sie es, durchzuhalten und Großbritannien sicher in den Hafen zu manövrieren? Neue Handelsabkommen rund um den Globus abzuschließen? Die heimische Wählerschaft zufriedenzustellen und zugleich das Wohlwollen Ihrer ehemaligen EU-Partner nicht vollständig zu verspielen? Die Wirtschaft davon abzuhalten, sich eigenständig in Richtung Abgrund zu bewegen? Und nebenbei jene Parlamentskollegen im Blick zu behalten, deren politische Loyalität erfahrungsgemäß keine feste Größe ist?

Ein Spielbuch, in dem Sie sämtliche Entscheidungen treffen. Was sollte da schon schiefgehen?

Brexit: saurez-vous sauver le Royaume-Uni? is the French version:

Vous êtes Premier ministre britannique et le Brexit est lancé. Vous disposez de deux petites années pour détricoter une alliance patiemment construite pendant quarante ans. Et ce n’est que le début du parcours d’obstacles. Votre gouvernement ressemble à une cour de récréation, votre parti se fracture un peu plus chaque jour, et le pays reste férocement divisé.

Saurez-vous tenir jusqu’au bout et ramener le Royaume-Uni à bon port ? Négocier des accords commerciaux aux quatre coins du globe ? Composer avec une opinion publique versatile tout en ménageant vos anciens partenaires européens ? Empêcher l’économie de partir en vrille ? Le tout en surveillant ces collègues parlementaires dont les couteaux affûtés brillent déjà dans la pénombre?

Un livre-jeu où vous décidez de tout. Franchement, qu’est-ce qui pourrait mal tourner?

Brexit: Czy wyprowadzisz Wielką Brytanię z UE bez katastrofy? is the Polish version.

Jesteś premierem Wielkiej Brytanii, a Brexit właśnie się rozpoczął. Masz zaledwie dwa lata, aby wynegocjować rozplątanie sojuszu budowanego przez ponad cztery dekady. A to dopiero początek pola minowego, które musisz przejść. Twój gabinet trudno utrzymać w ryzach, twoja partia rozpada się na kawałki, a kraj pozostaje głęboko podzielony w tej sprawie.

Czy zdołasz wytrwać i bezpiecznie doprowadzić Wielką Brytanię do portu? Wynegocjować nowe umowy handlowe na całym świecie? Pogodzić poparcie wyborców w kraju z życzliwością dawnych partnerów z Unii Europejskiej? Powstrzymać gospodarkę przed wpadnięciem w spiralę spadku? A przy tym pilnować tych kolegów z parlamentu, którzy tylko czekają z nożami w rękach, by wbić ci je w plecy?

To książka-gra, w której wszystkie decyzje należą do ciebie. Cóż może pójść nie tak?

If you spot mistakes in the translations or any bugs in the game, let me know. At least those are the kind of blunders we can fix.

March? But it's September!

If you live in Britain and you aren't the sort who feels like looting shops and chucking bricks at the police in response to a school stabbing tragedy, and if you deplore the cheapening of British politics by the Trump-wannabes of Reform UK, you might want to register your support for a more international and inclusive worldview by coming to London on Saturday for the Rejoin EU march. (Strictly a peaceful and civilized affair, this, so angry old gammons may prefer to stay home and wrestle their XL bullies.)

If marching isn't your thing, there's an open letter you can sign. Or, if you're interested in the whole UK/EU question but don't have a strong view either way, or even if you still think Brexit could work out fine, you could just play Can You Brexit? and see how you get on. (Hint: if you just make decisions at random you'll still do better than the Tory governments of the last eight years.)

Still, we're all for evidence-based reasoning here. No ideology counts a jot against hard facts, so be sure to fully research the subject before you form an opinion, and be ready to update your opinion if the facts change.

Are you trying to run a country?

People keep asking when Jamie and I are going to write another gamebook, and after twenty-two years we finally have. It’s called Can You Brexit (Without Breaking Britain)? and the story begins on the day in 2017 that the UK gave notice of its intention to quit the European Union.

You play the Prime Minister and you have two years (played out over four six-monthly “game turns”) to negotiate Britain’s future relationship with the union of which it has been a member since 1973. Imagine a divorce settlement after forty-five years of marriage, multiply by a half a billion people, add a poisonous cauldron of political ideology, raise to boiling point with a baying partisan press that's way off to the right of Attila the Hun, and you’ll have some idea of how smoothly those talks are going to go.

In Can You Brexit? there are ten main issues to be negotiated (residency rights for EU citizens living in Britain, security & defence arrangements post-Brexit, the National Health Service, etc) and you only have time to oversee a few of those issues in person; the rest are delegated to your ministers. So you have to manage your time while trying to prevent the four metrics (Authority, Economy, Popularity and Goodwill) from going into a tailspin.

Describing it like that makes it sound dry. It’s not. Think Veep or The Thick of It (or, for older readers, Yes Minister) rather than House of Cards or The West Wing. (Not that those last two are dry either, but you know what I mean.) At the same time, we aimed to make the game part of it informative and factually accurate. Perhaps the best comparison is Private Eye, with its blend of blistering satire, nose-tweaking mischief, and hard-nosed determination to speak truth to power. Jamie did win the 2012 Roald Dahl Funny Prize, after all, so trust me, you'll be entertained as well as informed.

Only hours after our agent sent the manuscript out to publishers he was getting replies that described it as brilliant. One editor phoned up the next day to say she’d read it and thought it was a work of genius. There’s a but. None of London’s top publishers took it – and to explain why an editor’s wild enthusiasm for a book could be shot down so easily by the acquisitions committees that make these decisions I’d have to give you a crash course in how modern publishing works. But here's a typical response that we got a month on:

“I loved the idea and I promptly sent it round to all my colleagues. I was particularly taken by the level of effort Dave and Jamie have put into it. Added to which, they write really well (the Yes Minister comparison was a good one). I’m afraid where it foundered for us was the horrible greyness of Brexit itself. The book is very funny but the thought of imagining yourself into running the debacle is enough to make anyone want to hide in a cupboard – so I’m not convinced that the coverage I could definitely see this book getting would lead to proper sales… and I’m afraid they all agreed. So I’m afraid in the end we are going to pass, even though there is something essentially very brilliant about the book. It is a great project that definitely deserves success. ”

That's publishers these days. Always willing to back something they truly believe in, just so long as there's absolutely no risk attached. Pass me the spittoon. Luckily Jamie and I have our own small publishing imprint, so the fruit of a year’s labour doesn’t have to be cast into a desk drawer. I realize it’s not shotgunning zombies or looting dragon hoards, but if you want to see what a gamebook for grown-ups looks like, this one's for you.

And as an antidote to all those naysayers in publishing, who really just want a TV celeb to offer them a book about cats and Brexit, we got this cheering endorsement from my good friend Tim Harford, author of The Undercover Economist and presenter of BBC Radio's More or Less.

“A wholly original approach to the big question of our times, this book educates, entertains, and also achieves the seemingly impossible feat of making you empathise with Theresa May. It reminded me of Yes Minister: it made me laugh, but then it made me think.”

Also available in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Australia. Find more about it on Gamebook News.