Line #6 YMMV/AVeryBritishCoup

Context YMMV / AVeryBritishCoup

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1	* HilariousInHindsight: A few aspects of the novel would prove ''not'' to be prescient:
2	** In 1981, when it was being written, the hard-left Tony Benn was challenging strongly for the deputy leadership of the Labour Party. Benn narrowly lost that contest to Denis Healey, a heavyweight of Labour's right wing, and in 1983 actually lost his own seat in the House of Commons (though he came back in a by-election within a year).
3	** In fact, Labour overall lost the 1983 and 1987 elections ''very'' heavily and didn't return to power until 1997, under the very un-Perkins-esque UsefulNotes/TonyBlair.
4	** The novel has a Conservative-SDP coalition government in power until Perkins' election win in 1989.
5	** When Jeremy Corbyn won Labour's 2015 leadership election, the party went one step further than Perkins -- who has (scanty) Cabinet experience. Corbyn had spent the previous 32 years on the backbenches and has never held a ministerial brief.
6	*** Chris Mullin credited Corbyn for a [[https://twitter.com/chrismullinexmp/status/667646103374979072 2015 reprint of his novel]].
7	** After his victory, Perkins arrives in UsefulNotes/{{London}} from Sheffield on an [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Passenger_Train Advanced Passenger Train]]. The APT would never enter full passenger service and the St. Pancras to Sheffield line is ''still'' not electrified.
8	** Foreign Secretary Newsome helps secure an urgent foreign loan from Libya's military strongman -- ''not'' UsefulNotes/MuammarGaddafi. The colonel in this book "had succeeded Gaddafi in a bloody coup two years before [i.e., in 1987]." Gaddafi stayed in power until [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_military_intervention_in_Libya he was killed in 2011]].
9	** On the other hand, one senior civil servant tells a colleague one day as winter approaches, "What we need now is a nice long miners' strike." There had been [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_miners%27_strike several major miners' strikes]] in Britain before, but [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_miners%27_strike_(1984%E2%80%9385) the most famous, most recent, and most sustained one]] was yet to come even when the novel was published. No miners' strike happened in ''Coup'' but had it happened, it would have been [[UnwittingPawn engineered]] to help destroy Perkins -- whereas UsefulNotes/MargaretThatcher's RealLife strike experience ended with her beating it back.
10	** In the novel and series, Queen UsefulNotes/ElizabethII has relatively recently died. In our timeline, she lived until 2022.

Context YMMV / AVeryBritishCoup