The Complete Yes Minister

by Jonathan Lynn

  While I was considering my answer — or to be precise, wondering if I really had an answer — he turned the anglepoise lamp on the desk in my direction. He wasn’t exactly shining it in my eyes, but I did have the distinct feeling that I was being given the third degree.

  And his next question did nothing to dilute the impression that I was under interrogation on account of suspect loyalty.

  ‘Are you happy in the Cabinet?’

  ‘Yes, of course I am.

  ‘You want to stay in it?’

  My heart sank into my boots. I couldn’t speak. My loyalty was now in doubt. Oh my God! I nodded mutely.

  ‘Well then?’ He waited for me to say something.

  I was sweating. And no longer thinking clearly enough. This was not the meeting that I had expected. I had expected to be on the attack. Instead I found myself fighting a desperate defensive. Suddenly my whole political future seemed to be on the line.

  And I still stuck to my guns. I’m not quite sure why. I think I was confused, that’s all.

  ‘There is such a thing as duty,’ I heard myself say rather pompously. ‘There are times when you have to do what your conscience tells you.’

  Vic lost his temper again. I could see why. Telling a Chief Whip that you have to follow your conscience really is like waving a red rag at a bull.

  And this time it wasn’t a quiet irritable loss of temper. It was the Big Shout, for which he is famous throughout the Palace of Westminster. He leapt to his feet. ‘Oh for God’s sake!’ he yelled, obviously at the end of his tether.

  His face came close to mine. Almost nose to nose. His angry bulging eyes were so near that they were slightly out of focus. He was utterly contemptuous of me now.

  ‘Must you go around flashing your petty private little individual conscience? Do you think no one else has got one? Haven’t you got a conscience about the survival of the government?’

  ‘Of course I have,’ I muttered, when the storm seemed to have abated temporarily.

  He walked away, satisfied that at least I’d given one correct answer. ‘Here’s the PM on the verge of signing an international agreement on anti-terrorism…’

  I interrupted, in self-defence. ‘I didn’t know about that,’ I explained.

  ‘There’s a lot you don’t know,’ snapped Vic contemptuously.

  [It is not surprising that Hacker did not know about a new international anti-terrorist agreement. So far as we have been able to find out, there was none. Vic Gould presumably invented this on the spur of the moment — Ed.]

  He came and sat beside me again. He tried to be patient. Or rather, he looked as though he was trying to be patient. ‘Can’t you understand that it’s essential to deal with the major policy aspects, rather than pick off a couple of little arms exporters and terrorist groups?’

  I hadn’t seen it like that. Furthermore, I realised that I’d better see it like that, and quickly, or else Vic would go on shouting at me all day. ‘I suppose it is only a couple of little terrorist groups,’ I said weakly.

  ‘They can’t kill that many people, can they?’

  ‘I suppose not,’ I agreed, with a little smile to show that I realised that perhaps I’d been a bit naïve.

  But Vic had still not finished with the insults. He sneered at me again. ‘And you want to blow it all in a fit of moral self-indulgence.’

  Clearly moral self-indulgence was the most disgusting thing Vic had ever come across. I felt very small.

  He sat back in his chair, sighed, then grinned at me and offered me a cigarette. And dropped the bombshell.

  ‘After all,’ he smiled, ‘the PM is thinking of you as the next Foreign Secretary.’

  I was astounded. Of course it’s what I’ve always wanted, if Martin’s ever kicked upstairs. But I didn’t know the PM knew.

  I declined his offer of a cigarette. He lit up, and relaxed. ‘Still, if it’s martydom you’re after,’ he shrugged, ‘go ahead and press for an enquiry. Feel free to jeopardise everything we’ve all fought for and worked for together all these years.’

  I hastily explained that that wasn’t what I wanted at all, that of course it is appalling if terrorists are getting British bomb detonators, but there’s no question that (as Vic had so eloquently explained it) one has a loyalty, the common purpose, and things must be put in perspective.

  He nodded. ‘Of course,’ he said, making a concession to my original point of view, ‘if you were at the Ministry of Defence or the Board of Trade…’

  I interrupted. ‘Exactly. Absolutely. Ministry of Defence problem. Department of Trade problem. I see that now.’ It’s just what Humphrey had been trying to say to me, in fact.

  We fell silent, both waiting, sure that the problem was now resolved. Finally Vic asked if we could hold it over for the time being, so that we could avoid upsetting and embarrassing the PM.

  I agreed that we could. ‘In fact,’ I admitted, rather ashamed of my naïvety, ‘I’m sorry I mentioned it.’

  ‘Good man,’ said Vic paternally. I don’t think he was being ironic, but you can never tell with Vic.

  September 10th

  Annie had spent the latter part of the week in the constituency, so I wasn’t able to get her advice on my meeting with Vic until this weekend.

  Not that I really needed advice. By today it was quite clear to me what I had to do. I explained to Annie over a nightcap of Scotch and water.

  ‘On balance I thought the right thing was to let sleeping dogs lie. In the wider interest. As a loyal member of the government. Nothing to be gained by opening a whole can of worms.’

  She argued, of course. ‘But the Major said they were terrorists.’

  I couldn’t blame her for taking such a naïve approach. After all, even I had made the same mistake till I’d thought it all through properly.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But we bombed Dresden. Everyone’s a terrorist in a way, aren’t they?’

  ‘No,’ she said firmly, and gave me a look which defied me to disagree with her.

  I had overstated it a bit. ‘No, well, but metaphorically they are,’ I added. ‘You ought to meet the Chief Whip, he certainly is.’

  Annie pursued me. She didn’t understand the wider interest, the more sophisticated level on which decisions like this have to be reached. ‘But someone in Britain is giving bombs to murderers,’ she reiterated.

  ‘Not giving,’ I corrected her. ‘Selling.’

  ‘That makes it okay, does it?’

  I told her to be serious, and to think it through. I explained that an investigation could uncover all sorts of goings-on.

  She wasn’t impressed with this argument.

  ‘Ah, I see,’ she smiled sadly. ‘It’s all right to investigate if you might catch one criminal, but not if you might catch lots of them.’

  ‘Not if they’re your Cabinet colleagues, that’s right!’ She’d got the point now. But she sighed and shook her head. Clearly, she had not yet taken my new line on board. So I persisted. I really wanted her to understand. And to agree.

  ‘Annie, Government is a very complex business. There are conflicting considerations.’

  ‘Like whether you do the right thing or the wrong thing?’

  I was infuriated. I asked her what else she suggested that I could do. She told me to take a moral stand. I told her I’d already tried that. She told me I hadn’t tried hard enough. I asked what else I could do. She told me to threaten resignation. I told her that they’d accept it.

  And once out of office there’s no going back. No one ever resigned on a matter of principle, except a few people with a death wish. Most resignations that are said to be based on principle are in reality based on hard-nosed political calculations.

  ‘Resignation might be a sop to my conscience and to yours,’ I explained, ‘but it won’t stop the arms supply to the terrorists.’

  ‘It might,’ she retorted, ‘if you threaten to tell what you know.’

  I considered that for a moment. But, in fact,
what do I know? I don’t know anything. At least, nothing I can prove. I’ve no hard facts at all. I know that the story is true simply because no one has denied it — but that’s not proof. I explained all this to Annie, adding that therefore I was in somewhat of a fix.

  She saw the point. Then she handed me a letter. ‘I don’t think you realise just how big a fix you’re in. This arrived today. From Major Saunders.’

  This letter is a catastrophe. Major Saunders can prove to the world that he told me about this scandal, and that I did nothing. And it is a photocopy — he definitely has the original.

  And it arrived Recorded Delivery. So I can’t say I didn’t get it.

  I’m trapped. Unless Humphrey or Bernard can think of a way out.

  September 12th

  Bernard thought of a way out, thank God!

  At our meeting first thing on Monday morning he suggested the Rhodesia Solution.

  Humphrey was thrilled. ‘Well done Bernard! You excel yourself. Of course, the Rhodesia Solution. Just the job, Minister.’

  I didn’t know what they were talking about at first. So Sir Humphrey reminded me of the Rhodesia oil sanctions row. ‘What happened was that a member of the government had been told about the way in which British companies were sanction-busting.’

  ‘So what did he do?’ I asked anxiously.

  ‘He told the Prime Minister,’ said Bernard with a sly grin.

  ‘And what did the Prime Minister do?’ I wanted to know.

  ‘Ah,’ said Sir Humphrey. ‘The Minister in question told the Prime Minister in such a way that the Prime Minister didn’t hear him.’

  I couldn’t think what he and Bernard could possibly mean. Was I supposed to mumble at the PM in the Division Lobby, or something?

  They could see my confusion.

  ‘You write a note,’ said Humphrey.

  ‘In very faint pencil, or what? Do be practical, Humphrey.’

  ‘It’s awfully obvious, Minister. You write a note that is susceptible to misinterpretation.’

  I began to see. Light was faintly visible at the end of the tunnel. But what sort of note?

  ‘I don’t quite see how,’ I said. ‘It’s a bit difficult, isn’t it? “Dear Prime Minister, I have found that top-secret British bomb detonators are getting into the hands of Italian terrorists!” How do you misinterpret that?’

  ‘You can’t,’ said Humphrey, ‘so don’t write that. You use a more… circumspect style.’ He chose the word carefully. ‘You must avoid any mention of bombs and terrorists and all that sort of thing.’

  I saw that, of course, but I didn’t quite see how to write such an opaque letter. But it was no trouble to Humphrey. He delivered a draft of the letter to my red box for me tonight. Brilliant.

  [We have managed to find the letter, in the Cabinet Office files from Number Ten, subsequently released under the Thirty-Year Rule — Ed.]

  [Hacker’s diary continues — Ed.]

  The letter is masterly because not only does it draw attention to the matter in a way which is unlikely to be remarked, but it also suggests that someone else should do something about it, and ends with a sentence implying that even if they do, they won’t get anywhere. So if at any future date there is an enquiry I’ll be in the clear, and yet everyone will be able to understand that a busy PM might not have grasped the implications of such a letter. I signed it at once.

  September 13th

  I congratulated Humphrey this morning on his letter, and told him it was very unclear. He was delighted.

  He had further plans all worked out. We will not send the letter for a little while. We’ll arrange for it to arrive at Number Ten on the day that the PM is leaving for an overseas summit. This will mean that there will be further doubt about whether the letter was read by the PM or by the acting PM, neither of whom will remember of course.

  This is the finishing touch, and will certainly ensure that the whole thing is written off as a breakdown in communications. So everyone will be in the clear, and everyone can get on with their business.

  Including the red terrorists.

  And I’m afraid I’m a little drunk tonight, or I wouldn’t have just dictated that deeply depressing sentence.

  But it’s true. And I’ve been formulating some theories about government. Real practical theories, not the theoretical rubbish they teach in Universities.

  In government you must always try to do the right thing. But whatever you do, you must never let anyone catch you trying to do it. Because doing right’s wrong, right?

  Government is about principle. And the principle is: don’t rock the boat. Because if you do rock the boat all the little consciences fall out. And we’ve all got to hang together. Because if we don’t we’ll all be hanged separately. And I’m hanged if I’ll be hanged.

  Why should I be? Politics is about helping others. Even if it means helping terrorists. Well, terrorists are others, aren’t they? I mean, they’re not us, are they?

  So you’ve got to follow your conscience. But you’ve also got to know where you’re going. So you can’t follow your conscience because it may not be going the same way that you are.

  Aye, there’s the rub.

  I’ve just played back today’s diary entry on my cassette recorder. And I realise that I am a moral vacuum too.

  September 14th

  Woke up feeling awful. I don’t know whether it was from alcoholic or emotional causes. But certainly my head was aching and I felt tired, sick, and depressed.

  But Annie was wonderful. Not only did she make me some black coffee, she said all the right things.

  I was feeling that I was no different from Humphrey and all that lot in Whitehall. She wouldn’t have that at all.

  ‘He’s lost his sense of right and wrong,’ she said firmly. ‘You’ve still got yours.’

  ‘Have I?’ I groaned.

  ‘Yes. It’s just that you don’t use it much. You’re a sort of whisky priest. You do at least know when you’ve done the wrong thing.’

  She’s right. I am a sort of whisky priest. I may be immoral but I’m not amoral. And a whisky priest — with that certain air of raffishness of Graham Greene, of Trevor Howard, that je ne sais quoi — is not such a bad thing to be.

  Is it?

  20 The Middle-Class Rip-off

  September 24th

  After my constituency surgery this morning, which I used to do every other Saturday but which I can now manage less often since I became a Minister, I went off to watch Aston Wanderers’ home match.

  It was a sad experience. The huge stadium was half empty. The players were a little bedraggled and disheartened, there was a general air of damp and decay about the whole outing.

  I went with Councillor Brian Wilkinson, Chairman of the local authority’s Arts and Leisure Committee and by trade an electrician’s mate at the Sewage Farm, and Harry Sutton, the Chairman of the Wanderers, a local balding businessman who’s done rather well on what he calls ‘import and export’. Both party stalwarts.

  Afterwards they invited me into the Boardroom for a noggin. I accepted enthusiastically, feeling the need for a little instant warmth after braving the elements in the Directors’ Box for nearly two hours.

  I thanked Harry for the drink and the afternoon’s entertainment.

  ‘Better enjoy it while the club’s still here,’ he replied darkly.

  I remarked that we’d always survived so far.

  ‘It’s different this time,’ said Brian Wilkinson.

  I realised that the invitation was not purely social. I composed myself and waited. Sure enough, something was afoot. Harry stared at Brian and said, ‘You’d better tell him.’ Wilkinson threw a handful of peanuts into his mouth, mixed in some Scotch, and told me.

  ‘I’ll not mince words. We had an emergency meeting of the Finance Committee last night, Aston Wanderers is going to have to call in the receiver.’

  ‘Bankruptcy?’ I was shocked. I mean, I knew that football clubs were generally in trou
ble, but this really caught me unawares.

  Harry nodded. ‘The final whistle. We need one and a half million quid, Jim.’

  ‘Peanuts,’ said Brian.

  ‘No thank you,’ I said, and then realised that he was describing the sum of one and a half million pounds.

  ‘Government wastes that much money every thirty seconds,’ Brian added.

  As a member of the government, I felt forced to defend our record. ‘We do keep stringent control on expenditure.’

  It seemed the wrong thing to say. They both nodded, and agreed that our financial control was so stringent that perhaps it was lack of funds for the fare which had prevented my appearance at King Edward’s School prize-giving. I explained — thinking fast — that I’d had to answer Questions in the House that afternoon.

  ‘Your secretary said you had some committee meeting.’

  Maybe I did. I can’t really remember that kind of trivial detail. Another bad move. Harry said, ‘You know what people round here are saying? That it’s a dead loss having a Cabinet Minister for an MP. Better off with a local lad who’s got time for his constituency.’

  The usual complaint. It’s so unfair! I can’t be in six places at once, nobody can. But I didn’t get angry. I just laughed it off and said it was an absurd thing to say.

  Brian asked why.

  ‘There are great advantages to having your MP in the Cabinet,’ I told him.

  ‘Funny we haven’t noticed them, have we, Harry?’

  Harry Sutton shook his head. ‘Such as?’

  ‘Well…’ And I sighed. They always do this to you in your constituency, they feel they have to cut you down to size, to stop you getting too big for your boots, to remind you that you need them to re-elect you.

  ‘It reflects well on the constituency,’ I explained. ‘And it’s good to have powerful friends. Influence in high places. A friend in need.’

  Harry nodded. ‘Well, listen ’ere, friend — what we need is one and a half million quid.’

  I had never imagined that they thought I could solve their financial problems. Was that what they thought, I wondered? So I nodded non-committally and waited.