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The novel was written in response to Thatcher. It still adapts pretty well to the current political climate.
The film did fix one narrative problem in the book, something Moore admits in the prefix to the current edition of the book. In the book, the catastrophic thing that happened was a nuclear war. Obviously, even a limited nuke war would leave the planet largely uninhabitable, in any normal way. The whole conspiracy theme doesn't appear in the novel. There are lots of other things that didn't make the book.
The crux of the adaptation question, for me, is Spoiler: V's deal with Creedy. That's an element that the Wachowskis added, and I'm not sure I like it. It buys them the main action sequence in the film, but at the cost of V's integrity. He makes a deal with the devil, and then breaks it. I don't think you can do that without costing the character something.
Oh, and Evie (who, in the novel, is called Eve after the prison scenes, signifying her having grown up) putting on the V costume in the novel is a pretty big deal. That would have been easy for them to include. Just launching the bomb doesn't really say the same thing--nor does her "he is you. he is me. he is all of us." line.
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