House of Cards - Plot

Plot

After the resignation of Margaret Thatcher, the governing Conservative Party is about to elect a new leader. Francis Urquhart MP (Ian Richardson), the Government Chief Whip in the House of Commons, introduces viewers to the contestants, from which the popular and decent Henry "Hal" Collingridge (David Lyon) emerges victorious. Urquhart is secretly contemptuous of Collingridge, but expects promotion to a senior position in the Cabinet. After the general election, which the party wins by a reduced majority, Urquhart makes his suggestions for a cabinet reshuffle. However, Collingridge — citing Harold Macmillan's political demise after sacking half his Cabinet — effects no changes at all. Urquhart resolves to oust Collingridge, with encouragement from his wife, Elizabeth (Diane Fletcher).

At the same time — with his wife's blessing — Urquhart begins an affair with the junior political reporter, Mattie Storin (Susannah Harker). It appears that the Urquharts believe that the affair will give him a power over Mattie that will enable him to manipulate her position at the main newspaper, The Chronicle, and subsequently skew her coverage of the Conservative Party's leadership contest. Mattie, while talented, is naïve and apparently somewhat unstable, for she has an apparent electra complex and declares that she will only refer to Urquhart as 'Daddy', a word that later figures prominently in Urquhart's painful flashbacks of her.

Urquhart recruits the party's public relations consultant, Roger O'Neill (Miles Anderson), by blackmailing him about his cocaine addiction. The two subsequently undermine Collingridge, giving the opposition information concerning hospital cuts that make him look foolish at Prime Minister's Question Time. Later, Urquhart blames Party Chairman Lord "Teddy" Billsborough (Nicholas Selby) for the leak of an internal poll showing a drop in Tory numbers, leading Collingridge to sack him. Meanwhile, Urquhart encourages ultraconservative Foreign Secretary Patrick Woolton (Malcolm Tierney) and newspaper tycoon Benjamin Landless to support Collingridge's removal. Finally, Urquhart poses as Collingridge's alcoholic brother Charles "Charlie" Collingridge in order to trade in a chemical company about to benefit from the government. Collingridge becomes falsely accused of insider trading. This, combined with his eroding image and his bad showing at the party conference, forces him to resign.

After Collingridge's resignation, Urquhart — in imitation of William Shakespeare's Richard of Gloucester — at first feigns unwillingness to stand before announcing his candidacy. With the help of his underling, Tim Stamper (Colin Jeavons), Urquhart goes about making sure his competitors drop out of the race: Peter MacKenzie, secretary of health, accidentally runs his car over a protester at a demonstration staged by Urquhart and is forced to withdraw by the public outcry, while Harold Earle, secretary for education, is blackmailed into withdrawing when Urquhart anonymously sends pictures of him in the company of a rentboy whom he had paid for sex.

The first ballot leaves Urquhart to face Samuels and Woolton. He eliminates Woolton by a prolonged scheme: At the party conferences, Urquhart pressures O'Neill into persuading his personal assistant and lover, Penny Guy (Alphonsia Emmanuel), to have sex with Woolton in his suite, with the encounter recorded through a bugged ministerial red box. When the tape is sent to Woolton, he is led to assume that Samuels is behind the scheme and backs Urquhart in the contest. Urquhart also receives support from Collingridge, who is unaware of Urquhart's role in his own downfall. Samuels is forced out of the running when it is revealed that he backed leftist causes as a student at Cambridge.

Stumbling across contradictions in the allegations against the Collingridge brothers, Mattie begins to dig deeper. On Urquhart's orders, O'Neill arranges for her car and flat to be vandalised in a show of intimidation. However, O'Neill becomes increasingly uneasy with what he is being asked to do, with his cocaine addiction adding to his instability. Urquhart mixes O'Neill's cocaine with rat poison, causing him to kill himself when taking the cocaine in a motorway lavatory.

Though initially blind to the truth of matters thanks to her relations with Urquhart, Mattie eventually deduces that Urquhart and his associates are behind the unfortunate downfalls of Collingridge and all of Urquhart's rivals. The story ends with Mattie Storin looking for Urquhart at the point when it looks like his victory is certain. She eventually finds him on the roof garden of the Houses of Parliament, where she confronts him. He admits to what he has done, in particular, to Roger O'Neill's murder. He then asks whether he can trust her, and, though she answers in the affirmative, he says that he does not believe her any more and throws her off the roof, onto a van parked below. While there, an unseen person picks up Mattie's tape recorder, which she had been using to secretly record her conversations with Urquhart.

Here the ending of the TV series differs from the novel. In the novel, Urquhart throws himself from the roof, knowing that Mattie will not hide her information. In the TV series, it is Urquhart who throws Mattie off the roof, onto a van parked below. The book also did not contain a romance between Mattie and Urquhart, as the dramatization did.

Subsequently, the TV series has Urquhart defeating Samuels in the second leadership ballot and ends with him being driven to Buckingham Palace to be invited to form a government by the Queen.