Institute a National Week of Quiet Surrender so we can finally stop pretending

Proposal: every year, for one full week in late october, the United Kingdom will officially suspend the pretence that things are getting better. Government will stop announcing initiatives. Ministers will stop appearing in hi-vis. Nobody will say "levelling up", "world-beating", or "investing in our future". The word "ambitious" will be banned from all press releases.

Instead we will quietly acknowledge, as a nation, that the things we said we were going to fix are not being fixed, that the services we said would be transformed have not been transformed, and that the timelines we committed to were, on reflection, pulled from the hat of a man who was running late for a cabinet meeting.

During Surrender Week:

— The Department for Health will issue a single statement reading "The NHS is, on balance, worse than it was, and we are sorry about it" and then close for the week.

— Network Rail will run no trains. This will go largely unnoticed.

— Planning applications will be processed at their normal speed, but the official response time will be updated to reflect reality, which is "it will be decided when someone eventually gets round to it, probably in november".

— The front page of gov.uk will display a simple black and white image of a man in a cardigan looking out of a rainy window, captioned "We tried".

— Nobody will commission a review.

— Biscuits will be provided at all public meetings, but the tea will be slightly weaker than usual. This is symbolic.

At the end of the week, normal service resumes. Initiatives are relaunched. Announcements are made. The cycle continues. But we will have had one honest week, and honestly, I think we need it.

The Managed Decline Party believes this policy combines our core values — realism, resignation, and a good cup of something hot — into a coherent offer to the electorate. We do not expect to win. We do not expect to be implemented. We only hope that one day, somebody in Whitehall will read this and quietly nod.