Britain and America; friends and allies as far back as anyone can remember. Both the US President and UK Prime Minister fancy a war but not everyone agrees including US Assistant Secretary for Diplomacy, US Army General (James Gandolfini) and a floundering British Minister Simon Foster (Tom Hollander). When Foster accidentally announces on national TV that ‘war is unforeseeable,’ the British government is sent into a spiral of chaos and spin propagated by verbosely aggressive Director of Communications, Malcom Tucker (Peter Capaldi). Foster attempts to neutralise his ‘unforeseeable’ comment by telling the British public to prepare to ‘climb the mountain of conflict’ but soon finds himself bundled off to Washington on a fact-finder where he becomes both a pawn for the secret war committee and a poster-boy for the General and the Assistant Secretary for Diplomacy’s anti-war campaign.