BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN
I remember the first time I played Patience. I was a boy—six, maybe seven—sitting at my grandmother’s dining table with a deck of her old bridge cards worn soft at the edges. I liked the order of the game, the way the cards seemed they could be tamed if you were careful. I’d lay them out on the mahogany table like a fortune teller, believing, in my youthful innocence, that order could be conjured from chaos.
Then there were the kings. Four of them, staring back at me with their stern, printed faces. My grandmother had said something once, offhand, about kings being the end of the game. I took it to mean something else. In my mind, they became my four grandparents. Each one turned over was another death waiting to happen.
I played slowly, my fingers trembling when a king surfaced. If I could bury them deep in the deck, keep them hidden, maybe it would keep death away. But the game didn’t work like that. The kings always appeared. And yet—no one died. The game ended, I shuffled, and I started again. My grandparents remained, solid as ever.
Later, I understood. The kings were never death. Fear of them was pointless, except it kept the game interesting. Time doesn’t care about children’s games. My grandparents left one by one – not because of any card, but because that’s what time does. It takes.
Now, less innocent, I see the same illusions of Patience played out larger.
Labour swept in on a wave of tired hope, last man standing, their Blairite speeches polished, their promises bright as cheap coins. They spoke of fairness, of rebuilding, of ‘fixing the foundations’. They used fear to focus.
But the economy didn’t soar as their spotty Fabian Society boffins predicted – it listed like a wounded ship. Hospitals became waystations for the quietly desperate. Streets grew thick with the debris of broken promises. Lie after lie emanated from Downing Street. The food bank queues and the Chancellor’s nose grew longer, while Labour’s eco-crusading con artists grew fat on green subsidies and consultancy fees. The idée fixes of socialist ideologies wrecking any chances.
Labour called their lying incompetence necessary medicine. Some papers printed their graphs showing theoretical futures where we might break even. The wealthy parked their assets offshore like spectators at a hanging. And still even New Labour’s champagne socialists pretended to believe because the alternative was admitting we’d been cheated at yet another game where only the house wins.
Perception is everything. This government tells you the economy is thriving while your neighbour sells his car to pay the rent. They can call a street safe when you no longer walk it after dark. They can promise a future while picking your pockets in the present. How did we stoop so low as to deserve this rabble?
I still play Patience sometimes. The old fear is long gone, replaced by colder understanding. The danger was never in the kings – it was in believing the game was fair to begin with, that you’d beat the odds.
Labour will pass, as all governments do. They’ll leave behind a Britain where food banks have loyalty cards and hospitals run on goodwill, having spent someone else’s money. The people will shuffle the deck again, hoping against experience, and eventually, one day, Britons will acquire honourable and competent leaders, just as often as one wins at Patience.
The odds of winning any random game of Patience is 12.09%, or a little more than 12 times in 100 games.
For the game rarely changes. Only the dealers do. Perception is everything.
And the truth?
The truth is the wound that never heals – the cut we give ourselves each time we believe the next shuffle will deliver competence and integrity.
The solution?
Put nonsensical fear to one side. Maximise the use of AI and behavioural nudges to streamline governance. Ensure full transparency in all operations. Transform politics from a theatrical spectacle into a routine function. By doing so, you’ll attract genuine public servants instead of the self-interested opportunists and perverts who dominate our house of cards today.
Dominic Wightman is the Editor of Country Squire Magazine, works in finance, and is the author of five and a half books including Conservatism (2024).