Talk:The Final Cut (TV serial)

Trivia

Removed the following info:

• The series refers to Thatcher as Britain's longest serving Prime Minister. She was actually the seventh. See Records of Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom.

This is incorrect. The series refers to Thatcher as Britain's longest serving post-war Prime Minister, which she is. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 84.41.184.120 (talk) 17:20, 23 February 2007 (UTC).

Not true. At the start of the film the series refers to her as "Britain's first female and longest-serving Prime Minister." I have it on DVD. The novel I think refers to as being the longest serving post-war PM but this is the film, not the novel. Game, set and match.

Makepeace's candidature

Having relinquished the Tory whip and crossed the floor, Makepeace would be ineligible to stand for the Conservative leadership.

Is this technically true? I'd have to check but IIRC there was no requirement in the rules for a candidate for the Conservative leadership to be an MP and therefore taking the whip. (I think Lord Sutch joined the party in 1990 in the hope of standing for the leadership and then running the country from the Strangers' Gallery!) And since the Conservative Party didn't have a national membership scheme at the time, I wonder if there actually was anything stopping an MP on the opposition benches who could get sufficient nominations to stand. Timrollpickering 23:58, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Nonsense. What would stop them in that case is that having resigned the Conservative whip and crossed the floor, he would have left the Conservative Party itself and therefore be ineligible to stand for its leadership. The lack of a national membership at that time had no bearing on who was eligible to stand - there was always a central administration which governed the party and its affiliated associations. The 1922 Committee would have governed eligibility and blocked the candidature of anyone who had openly "brought the party into disrepute" such as Makepeace, just as anyone standing against an official Conservative candidate at an election will automatically cease to be a member of the party under similar party protocol. Lstanley1979 (talk) 21:26, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Using the "fanfic omitted scene generator" (much in demand by //// writers) - Makepeace does a deal with the whips/party grandees/1922 Committee - he will be the stalking horse candidate allowed under party rules to weaken Urquhart's dominance, will be then "formally disallowed" allowing a free-for-all. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.104.132.41 (talk) 08:47, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

The problem is the reasoning is based on a strict reading of rules for a party that in those days wasn't very big on them. The Makepeace situation would be unusual but if he could find the formal support required it may have been politically hard to stop him regardless of technicalities even if he had been semi-detached in Parliament since declaring his intention to challenge. (In the book towards the end when Urquhart's capital is collapsing a lot of MPs start openly talking on Makepeace as the next leader even though he is now an Independent. In the real world a number of political parties have seen the leadership go to outsiders or detached figures, whether by challenge or invitation, though UK examples are rare - a few cases of Irish nationalist parties where the leader of a splinter group became the leader of the main force, merging his grouping inwards. Indeed in 1995 there was a one-man Northern Irish Unionist party seeking just that.) Really such an assertion on this should be sourced to any knowledgeable study - e.g. a political scientist's published critique of divergence from accuracy - and not just stated as fact without sources - classic original research . Timrollpickering (talk) 20:17, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Too many links!

please see WP:OVERLINK for guidance. -Arch dude (talk) 03:51, 25 November 2007 (UTC)