New video game lets you play as prime minister and see how long you can last

A solo developer has launched a satirical mobile game about role-playing as the prime minister of the UK, and it couldn’t have come at a better time.

In case you haven’t been paying attention, prime minister Sir Keir Starmer has announced that he will be stepping down, less than two years after the Labour party’s landslide victory in the last general election.

Although former Manchester mayor Andy Burnham is the current favourite to take over, a successor hasn’t formally been decided on. But considering the high turnover in prime ministers in this country (there’s already been six in just the last decade), we wouldn’t blame you for feeling unenthusiastic about who will be next.

You may even think you could do a better job than any of the last few PMs. Well, now you can test that theory with a newly released mobile game that casts you in the role of a prime minister in the midst of a constant stream of crises.

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.

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 record is 370 in-game weeks, which is just over seven years.

That’s a longer term than any prime minister has had since 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.

At the time of writing, Full Confidence is in the Apple store’s top paid games chart, sitting at ninth place above the likes of Stardew Valley and Balatro, and although there’s only a handful of player reviews, they are unanimously positive.

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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