It is a Thursday in late January and the House of Commons is having a normal day.
There are oral questions on Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs – addressing, among others, Russia and Ukraine, safe routes for Afghan refugees and aid for Tonga – put to the Foreign Secretary in the chamber.
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The Cryptocurrency (Regulation) Bill, which would “[increase] the scope of the Financial Conduct Authority to have jurisdiction over the cryptocurrency market”, is going through its second reading.
Still, there is some electricity in the air; as everyone knows, there is a general election coming up at the end of next month, and the Conservatives are hoping to finally get back into power.
Well, not quite everyone. If you aren’t one of the 4,300 members of Model House of Commons (MHOC), the subreddit that acts as an online parallel UK Parliament, it has probably passed you by.
Created in 2014, MHoC doesn’t only act as a virtual House of Commons; there is also a Reddit model House of Lords, model devolved assemblies, model lobby journalists, and a model Stranger’s bar, where members can go for “drinks”. There are 150 MPs, political parties, speakers, deputy speakers, ministers, shadow ministers, whips and everyone else.
The numerous bills and amendments read like they could reasonably become real laws tomorrow, and debates are often as good as their bona fide counterparts, both in tone and content.
The only jarring part is the usernames; its current Prime Minister is KarlYonedaStan and its Leader of the House Muffin5136. On the Liberal Democrat frontbench sits their spokesperson on foreign affairs, Potatoheadz35.
“It can be surprisingly dramatic, and it imitates the intrigue of real politics – tight votes, u-turns, private negotiations, people briefing against each other – very well”, says Nuke, the former deputy speaker turned head moderator of the channel. “I vividly remember doing uni work in one tab and negotiating coalition deals in another.”
Now 24, Nuke is based in England and discovered MHoC in 2017. Like him, most people involved in the subreddit are between 16 and 25 (“with a small number being older”) and based in Britain, though there are players from “all over the world”.
According to him, the model House of Commons’s longevity is the reason behind its incredible intricacy. General elections, for example, used to be done manually, with each user “voting” on dedicated forms. This triggered Reddit’s spam filters, so the system had to evolve.
“Now, all activity – debating, writing legislation, press output, etc – is scored, and these scores are put into spreadsheets and converted into polling figures. This then contributes to how many seats people win at election time.”
Each general election campaign then culminates in a dedicated YouTube livestream mimicking the all-nighters put on by TV channels.
Still, virtual members of Parliament aren’t just in it for the mechanics; as with real life, the politics are the main draw. For 21-year old CountBrandenburg – the current deputy first minister in Scotland – “what’s kept me around for so long has been relative freedom to look into policy that I’m interested in”.
“I haven’t been someone to go on the constant opposition grind during my time in MHoC and worked with governments – or opposition, in cases when my party has been in government – to work on policy; that ability to work together and get feedback in drafting policy is definitely one of the key things I find fun.”
“For example, I would never spend my time discussing pulse fishing policy with people in person.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the sense of community is also an important part of MHoC. Even the nerdiest of university students do not tend to be this interested in politics – real or virtual – and getting to meet like-minded people, no matter how esoteric your passions are, remains one of the great upsides of the internet.
“We have all sorts of members with all sorts of opinions, and whatever niche area you’re interested in you can probably find someone to talk to/argue with about it,” Nuke said. “It might seem weird, but I’ve made real friends while I’ve been here.”
Of course, an obvious next step for these virtual politicians would be to make the jump into real-life Westminster, but it isn’t clear that it is what they want. Though he follows current affairs closely and has gone leafletting before, Nuke is “not aspiring towards a political career at the moment”.
Similarly, CountBrandeburg found his interest in IRL politics to only be strengthened by his work in MHoC, but his “interests lay elsewhere for after uni”. He doesn’t rule out changing his mind at some point, but “it’s not likely you’d ever see me as an MP”.
Perhaps they have a point; if what you like about politics is the researching, writing and scrutinising of policy, MHoC is probably a better place for you than the current House of Commons.
Well, at least for now; the subreddit has only been going for nine years, compared to Parliament’s 800 or so. There is more than enough time for things to go sour. As CountBranderburg admitted, “MHoC has been no stranger to ministerial scandals; I’ve been part of a government that has lost a motion of no confidence due to a minister misleading the House over discussions being held”. Just give them a few more years and virtual swings are sure to be broken eventually.
In the meantime – there is a virtual election to be fought and campaigning will be fierce, though there has already been calls for members to keep the right priorities in mind.
As Sephronar put it in an op-ed published in the MHoC press: “The communities around this United Kingdom, the voters that elected us to these Houses in the first place, are the glue that holds together the fabric of our nation – it is they who decide what our priorities should be, what ideology Parliament predominantly takes; at the end of the day, when all is said and done, we are the way we are because of them.
Every Member of Parliament, every Lord, every Minister – we all have one priority; not political scheming, not pushing ideology, not scoring points in the press. Our priority is delivering on the promises that our manifesto mandated us to deliver.”
Virtual politicians probably aren’t the only ones who could heed those words right now.
