An Open Invite to Our Leaders

So it looks like we are facing a coalition for the first time in 30 years - many politicians and political observers are frightened about such an outcome and so they should be. I have been involved in many coalitions in my career and none of them have been remotely succesful.

It must be said that I rarely enter a coalition willingly, more often than not I am dragged kicking and screaming into a losing partnership, usually hampered by a weak individual hoping that my power will hand them an undeserved electoral win. Nine times out of ten, their involvement actually hampers my own progression and I find myself yanked back into a losing state and spend the next weeks and months seeking revenge on every possible platform.

Unlike our elected leaders, my coalitions occur on the battleground of Die Macher and rarely does anyone outside of my living room give a flying toss about whether or not I am elected chancellor of Germany, however I do think our leaders could learn from our gaming experiences and I humbly suggest that before Mr Clegg make the biggest decision and arguably the biggest mistake of his political career, he should spend a few hours with messrs Cameron, Brown, Salmond and Llwyd - these hours should not be spent bickering over economic concerns, taxation or even defense. These hours should be spent gaming.

Board gaming teaches you a great deal about your friends and enemies. You discover their inherent foibles and deep rooted beliefs, never is this more apparent than in Martin Wallace's classic Railroad Game "Steam/Age of Steam"

Steam of course plays 6 but as the game demands the handling of black and yellow cubes, Nick Griffins "white only" policy would render him unable to take part and thus my suggestion has been restricted to the five main (sane) parties in the land.

In Steam each player takes the roll of a budding railroad developer attempting to build and run the most efficient rail network in the country. Players begin with nothing and many will end with even less as the economy of the game is brutal, bad planning is punished horribly and poor placement can result in hours of gaming misery.

It would indeed be interesting to see how our leaders would fair in such a circumstance.

Before any one player can commence their industrial empire, turn order has to be decided and this is achieved by means of Auction. In the auction players spend their limited cash funds buying position, being last to play costs nothing at all, whilst being first or second costs everything you bid, 3rd and 4th positions cost half the tabled money. The game can be won and lost on the auction round, no-one wants to pay too much for position but finding yourself last in action could be costly, thus everyone must ensure they spend no more than they can afford to get the position they need, being dragged into a bidding war could be disastrous.

Funding for the auction is obtained by acquiring debt, thus before anyone puts a single token on the board, they are lumbered with outgoings they must support and repay. Debt Management is one of the biggest problems facing any Steamer.

Do you adopt the Cameron policy of borrow little and repay quickly, sure this will guarantee a healthy balance sheet but at what cost? Would his company be able to develop the right routes and achieve the correct flow of goods with little public funding?

There is no doubt that Mr Brown would borrow everything going in order to secure what he considers to be the prime real estate - but having saddled his company with massive overheads will he manage to maintain his outgoings whilst struggling to develop his company into Profit?

Not for the first time I would find myself agreeing with Mr Clegg's middle ground attitude, there is a lot to be said for playing the safe game and waiting for the big pay off in later rounds but will you find yourself saddled with less appealing options and limited room to manoeuvre?

We all know that Salmond and Llwyd would struggle to see past their own borders and would be convinced that economic prosperity could be achieved by building small self contained networks and feeding their own machine from their own limited resources but what happens when the produce dries up, will they be able to negotiate access to more profitable networks when they need the help?

Rarely has a game of Steam played out in our household without even the closest of friends coming to partial blows over the "theft" of resources and "blockage" of routes. Never has a game ended without one player's ego blinding him to the correct course of action. Who hasn't overspent horribly because of their paranoia that another player is about to piggyback their route.

Nick Clegg would learn a great deal about his potential partners over such a game - he would know who stays calm in the face of adversity, he would quickly realise which of them had the best strategic mind and perhaps most importantly of all, he would learn which players he could trust to do the right thing at the right time as opposed to enacting a pointless revenge over a previous grievance.

In short, I invite them all over on Wednesday, we are a friendly group and if 3 hours of Steam doesn't make them realise what needs to be done in the country's interest, we could always subject them to "Year of the Dragon" I'd just love to see Cameron and Brown fighting over fireworks whilst their respective houses fall into wreckage due to their inability to see the need for proper health care and education.

Anyway - thats my tuppence.

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