A Very British Coup

The Public Servants - Browne:
[Checking the backgrounds of the incoming Cabinet] I imagine you ran the names through the computer.

The Public Servants - Fiennes:
Yes. Three Communists, two Trotskyites and a queer.

The Public Servants - Browne:
That's par for the course in any Cabinet during my lifetime.

The Public Servants - Fiennes:
Plus a senior Minister who's screwing a young lady from Hampstead Labour Party.

The Public Servants - Browne:
I always assumed that was more or less why young ladies joined the Hampstead Labour Party.

The Cabinet - Harry Perkins:
Democracy takes time. Dictatorship is quicker but too many people get shot.

The Cabinet - Harry Perkins:
These people are the Opposition. It's their duty to plot against me. I plotted against them!

The Cabinet - Harry Perkins:
What about all these things they say about me?

The People - Patel:
I know they are lies. I sell cigarettes too. But I never smoke... Did you want to buy something, Mr. Perkins?

The Cabinet - Harry Perkins:
Ah, well I am trying to give up newspapers but ah, I suppose I could take box of matches

The Cabinet - Harry Perkins:
In South America, they'd call this a coup d'?tat.

The Public Servants - Browne:
But no firing squad, no torture or retribution. No bloodshed. A very British coup, wouldn't you say?

The Public Servants - Fiennes:
Helen Jarvis, formerly Helen Spence. She and her husband run an investment trust in the City.

The Public Servants - Browne:
Strange company for Perkins.

The Public Servants - Fiennes:
I gather it's an ideologically sound investment trust.

The Public Servants - Browne:
What on Earth does that mean?

The Public Servants - Fiennes:
Broadly speaking they don't invest money in anything that involves armaments or insecticides or paying low wages to black people.

The Public Servants - Browne:
One wonders how they survive.

The Public Servants - Fiennes:
Apparently there's a demand for pristime profit. All those people who read The Independent.

The Cabinet - Harry Perkins:
To coin a phrase, I am going to tell you the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

The Media - Fison:
[Watching on television] He can't do that, he's the Prime Minister!