Evening Post, 3 Mar 2006

A Very British Coup Chris Mullin, Politico’s, £7.99

Nothing dates quicker than prophecy. Take this thriller, which envisions the late 1980s from the left-hand side of 1982. Industry has vanished (not a bad guess, that) and North Sea oil has run out. The collapse of British Leyland has propelled Labour back into power under Harry Perkins, a straight-talking Sheffield radical who may then have seemed reminiscent of David Blunkett, and who pitches at once into a death-battle with the establishment. The novel doesn't match the later TV series - Alan Plater writes much better dialogue than Chris Mullin ever could - but the picture of a lost political world is absorbing.