Roth’s Westminster Parlour Game

Round the Cabinet TableBeat Burnham

Keir Starmer has resigned. Andy Burnham is the frontrunner to walk into Number 10, and the cabinet is his to name. Seat your own government, then see how close you got.

The answer key is a forecast, built from reported runners and Burnham’s known allies as of late June 2026. When the real cabinet is announced, open the Plug in the real cabinet tab, upload it once, and every score recalculates against the genuine article.

Build the cabinet you think Andy Burnham will appoint as Prime Minister, then score it against the forecast now and the real cabinet the moment he announces it.

1The Cabinet Table 2The Gossip Round 3The Reveal 4Reveal day 5The Panel

Build the cabinet you think Andy Burnham will appoint as Prime Minister. Score against the forecast now, and against the real cabinet the moment he announces it. The closer you get, the higher you rank.

1

The Cabinet Table

Fill all 27 seats. For each one, pick from the dropdown or type a wildcard name. Tools at the top: Pick for me (by a strategy), Randomise, or Clear. Bigger jobs score more, Chancellor is worth 100, Scotland 10. Watch the live Women/Men and North/South balance as you go.

2

The Gossip Round

The cheeky extra calls for extra points: will there be a Deputy PM, a brand-new cabinet post, who resigns first, the date of the first reshuffle, who gets parachuted into the Lords, and who takes the grace-and-favour homes. Dropdown or write-in.

3

The Reveal

See your score against the forecast now, and against reality once it is in. A beat-the-pundits benchmark shows whether you out-called the consensus. Flip the seat-by-seat breakdown, then download or share a result card.

4

Reveal day

When Burnham names his real cabinet, your prediction is scored against reality automatically, just reopen the game to see how you did and where you finished. Nothing to upload. (The host publishes the result once for everyone.)

5

The Panel

Load pundits' and friends' completed answer sheets to rank everyone on one leaderboard, with an auto-built Consensus Cabinet, the most-picked person per seat, thrown in as a rival.

Scoring: points for the right person anywhere in the cabinet, plus seniority-weighted points for the right person in the right job, plus your Gossip Round calls. A perfect game is around 1,865.

The real cabinet is in. See how your prediction did against what Burnham actually announced.
Seats filled
0 / 27
Gossip Round
0 / 6
Your score
Judged against
Forecast
Saved. No save button needed, you can close this and come back any time.
Your cabinet's complete. Now for the fun bit.Head to The Gossip Round: who resigns first, who grabs Chevening, who's bound for the Lords. Quick cheeky calls, more points, and the best laughs in the game.
New here, or don't know the politicians? You don't need to. Pick a style below and we'll seat a whole cabinet for you in one click. Then change any seat you fancy, or leave it as is.
← start here
×Claude's prediction. A steady-hand Burnham who keeps more of the team in place than the pundits expect, with two bold breaks. Chancellor goes to Darren Jones, a Treasury-tested moderniser, not Ed Miliband, who Claude keeps at Energy where his heart is. David Lammy stays at the Foreign Office and Yvette Cooper takes the Home Office. The eye-catcher is Clive Lewis at Defence, a soft-left ex-soldier for a soft-left PM. Wes Streeting holds his signature Health brief rather than moving up. Claude also bets Burnham invents a Ministry for AI under Miatta Fahnbulleh, and that the King of the North politely declines Chequers for a place up north. A distinct call, so Claude can be wrong in interesting ways. Think you can beat it?
You're in charge. Every dropdown is just a shortlist of suggestions, not a fixed list. Don't see who you want? Type any name into the write-in box under any seat.
Higher seniority, higher seat weight Write-in box under each seat = pick anyone

Full members of the Cabinet

Seat weight = points if you get the right person in this exact job
THEY ATTEND CABINET BUT ARE NOT FULL MEMBERS
Now for the fun part: The Gossip Round. This is where it gets cheeky. Will there be a Deputy PM? Who resigns first? Who gets Chevening? Who gets parachuted into the Lords? Quick, playful calls, and extra points.

The Gossip Round · the fun bit

Six cheeky calls for extra points

The playful round. Beyond the seats: will Burnham keep a Deputy PM, invent a brand-new post, who resigns first, the date of the first reshuffle, who he parachutes into the Lords, and who gets the grace-and-favour homes. Pick from the list or write in anyone.

Seat your cabinet, play The Gossip Round, then press Reveal the result.

Add your cabinet to the leaderboard

Pick a display nickname (no personal details, please) and submit. We store your nickname and your picks only, never your name or email. Your cabinet stays saved on this device, so you can come back any time to change it and submit again.

Best UK · what really drives growth

WPP BAV Best Countries 2026

A different game. Forget who Burnham will pick. The BAV Best Countries study weights ten dimensions of national reputation by how much each drives GDP. Cast the minister best placed to lift each one, weighted toward where the UK has the most to gain. Soft power beats banks & tanks: Movers and Quality of Life matter most; Power barely registers, and the UK ranks near the bottom on its two biggest levers, Movers (#48) and Open for Business (#49).

Now cast your cabinet

One minister per lever. The closer their brief fits the dimension, the higher the score.

0
Best UK score / 1000
Cast a minister for each lever

Editorial: the minister-to-dimension fit is derived from each person's real policy brief, a prompt for debate, not a precise metric. Best Countries measures perception that correlates with GDP, not a promise of growth. Source: WPP BAV Best Countries 2026.

Reveal day · publish the real cabinet

For the host, when Burnham announces

When Andy Burnham names his cabinet, enter it here once and hit publish. Every player is then scored against reality automatically the next time they open the game, and the leaderboard becomes the final standings. Players upload nothing, you do it once for everyone.

Step 1 · Set the real cabinet

Go down the seats below and pick the real appointee for each office from the list (type a write-in for any new face), set the real bonus answers, then click Save the real cabinet. The scoreboard switches to the real cabinet.

Prefer a spreadsheet? Optional, you can fill in the answer sheet and upload it instead:

Step 2 · Publish it to everyone

Once the real cabinet is entered, click Publish to download results.json. Upload that one small file into your /cabinet/ folder on the website (right next to index.html). That is the whole job: from then on every player is auto-scored against reality, and the leaderboard re-ranks to the final standings.

The Panel

Pundits & friends vs you

Get a pundit or a friend to fill in the answer sheet (download it in the Plug in the real cabinet tab), then load each completed sheet here as a named contender. Everyone is ranked on one board, and once two or more have made picks the game builds a Consensus Cabinet, the most-picked person for every seat, as its own contender.

Add a panellist

Name them, then upload their completed answer sheet, the same master sheet everyone fills in (Excel or CSV).