The mysterious Michael Rimmer, played by Peter Cook, appears at a small and ailing British advertising agency, where the staff initially assume he is there to run a routine time-and-motion study. Yet he quickly asserts de facto authority over the firm’s largely ineffective crew, and the incompetent boss Ferret (Arthur Lowe) is soon eclipsed as Rimmer seizes control. With a keen eye for leverage and a knack for reading people, he begins reshaping the operation, transforming it into a nimble, profitable machine even as the other staff watch in a mix of disbelief and awe. The once-stodgy agency gains a new edge, and Rimmer’s presence begins to feel less like a management shake-up and more like the birth of something ruthless and deliberate.
Under his renewed leadership, the firm earns a reputation as the country’s leading polling agency, and Rimmer begins to appear regularly on television as a polished, persuasive polling expert. His charisma and strategic mind do not remain confined to the boardroom; they extend into the realm of politics. He becomes an adviser to the leader of the Tory opposition, Tom Hutchinson (Ronald Fraser), lending his growing influence to a sphere where ideas often matter less than perception. In a calculated move, he engineers an inflammatory anti-immigration speech by Shadow Home Secretary Sir Eric Bentley (Roland Culver) to hand Hutchinson a pretext for firing Bentley’s rival and to demonstrate Conservative opposition to immigration without laying down real policy proposals. This maneuver helps Rimmer position himself as a power broker in the background, even as the party’s banners wave in the foreground.
As his influence grows, Rimmer secures Bentley’s vacant Budleigh Moor seat and steps into the political arena with a combination of charm, cunning, and ruthless ambition. Along the way, he quietly acquires a trophy wife, a detail that underscores the personal costs and price of power in his ascent. The ascent itself is marked by a chilling mix of calculated moves and, when necessary, deadly force, culminating in a spectacular act of political theater: after propelling himself into the highest echelons, he manipulates the system enough to position himself as prime minister, a climb aided by throwing a predecessor off an oil rig in a dramatic prelude to his coronation.
Once at the helm, Rimmer redefines governance through a startling experiment in direct democracy. He unleashes an ongoing cycle of referendums on a dizzying array of issues, using postal ballots and televoting to enlist the public in a stream of votes that swamp the political landscape. The effect is immediate and paradoxical: instead of empowering citizens, the relentless referendums foster fatigue and apathy, sparking widespread protests against the very reforms he champions. Undeterred, Rimmer presses on with a final gambit: a last vote to “streamline government” that would grant him dictatorial powers. The public, exhausted by the perpetual polling and the chaotic cascade of outcomes, ultimately approves the proposal, handing him unprecedented control.
In the story’s conclusion, Ferret reappears not as a rival to challenge Rimmer but as a casualty of the power struggles surrounding the new regime. During a lavish ride through the capital in an open-topped car, Ferret makes a desperate effort to strike back, but the attempt ends in tragedy as he falls to his death, sealing the brutal arc of Rimmer’s ascent from a fixer in a fading ad agency to a commander wielding sweeping, if precarious, authority. The film leaves viewers contemplating the seductive lure of popularity, the fragility of democratic systems when manipulated by rhetoric and spectacle, and the price paid by those who chase power through illusion rather than policy.
