About Show the Working
Show the Working is an independent project that reads what UK parties say they'll do and shows, issue by issue, what their policies would actually mean for your life — with every claim tied to a source you can check.
Why it exists
Manifestos are long, and the way policies are talked about is built to persuade, not to inform. It's genuinely hard for an ordinary person — or a busy journalist — to work out what a party's plans would do, as opposed to what they sound like. Show the Working exists to close that gap: to turn party promises into clear, sourced, comparable assessments, so you can decide for yourself on the evidence rather than the spin.
We don't tell you how to vote, and we don't claim to be neutral. We tell you what we found, show our working, and make it easy to challenge us.
Who's behind it
Show the Working is built and run by Olly, a UK-based software engineer, independently and in his own time. The "we" used elsewhere on this site is, honestly, mostly just me — the analysis is produced by a pipeline rather than written by hand, but there's no organisation behind it.
I'm not a political scientist, a journalist, or a party member — and that's rather the point. Show the Working doesn't ask you to trust my judgement; it shows its working so you can check it yourself. The credibility is meant to come from the method and the sources, not from me. I built it because I wanted it to exist and couldn't find it: a way to see what parties' policies would actually do — sourced, comparable, and without the spin.
It isn't run by, funded by, or affiliated with any political party, campaign, think tank, donor or advertiser. If that ever changes, it'll be disclosed here.
How it's funded
Show the Working is self-funded by its creator on a personal budget. It takes no money from any political party, donor, campaign or advertiser — and if that ever changes, the source will be published here.
Show the Working is free to use, carries no advertising, and sells no data. Analytics are cookieless and count visits only — no tracking, no personal data.
How it stays independent & fair
- Party-blind by design. Every verdict is produced without telling the system which party proposed the policy — the same policy text earns the same verdict whoever tabled it.
- A deliberately balanced set of topics. The issues we organise around are chosen so every side of politics can see its goals register as a benefit, not only as a cost to someone else's — tax and personal freedom sit alongside public services and the environment.
- No overall score. We never rank parties or add it all into a single number. You choose what matters and weigh it yourself.
How it's made
For each policy, an AI pipeline gathers evidence from credible outside sources (official data, independent think tanks, academics), then produces a verdict in which every factual claim quotes the exact source line behind it. A separate, independent automated check runs over each verdict to catch overstatements, mis-cited sources and false balance before it's published. If a claim can't be tied to a real source, it isn't shown.
It's AI-generated and source-checked, not infallible — see How this works & where it falls short for the method in full and an honest account of the limits.
Check us, challenge us
Every verdict opens to its evidence and sources, and carries a "report an error" button. If something's wrong, tell us — corrections are logged in public, and that's how it gets better.
Report an error using the button on any verdict — it opens a public GitHub issue, so the correction is logged in the open. You can raise anything else (including press enquiries) at github.com/obolland/policy-lens/issues ↗.