The Complete Yes Minister

[Politicians frequently try to avoid making public appearances that could give rise to jokes at their expense. For instance, when Harold Wilson was PM in the late 1960s some of his advisers suggested that perhaps he shouldn’t go to Fiddler on the Roof as it might encourage jokes about his leadership style. He also avoided going to visit A Month in the Country as it was feared that this would give rise to dangerous speculation that he was going to the country, i. e. calling a general election – Ed.]

At my diary session later this morning Bernard said that Sir Desmond Glazebrook wanted an urgent meeting with me tomorrow. He’s a ridiculous old fool who keeps making speeches against the government. Unfortunately, I appointed him Chairman of the Co-Partnership Commission – I’d had no choice [see Chapter 7 – Ed.].

Glazebrook wants to talk to me about his forthcoming application to add some more storeys to his bank’s proposed new office block.

Clearly he hasn’t read this morning’s papers!

This is just the sort of thing we have to stop. Someone has to speak out to save the environment. I shall do it, without fear or favour. It is the right thing to do. Also, it’ll be very popular.

[Bernard Woolley reported this conversation with Hacker to Sir Humphrey Appleby sometime later that day. He knew that Appleby was due to meet Sir Desmond Glazebrook for tea, to discuss the new high-rise building for the bank, and he felt obliged to let Sir Humphrey know the extent of the Minister’s opposition to it.

We found a report of this and of Appleby’s meeting with Glazebrook among Sir Humphrey’s private papers – Ed.]

B. reported to me that the Minister wanted to make a courageous stand on high buildings, for the press. I hope he has a head for heights. It seems that Hacker will do anything to get his picture in the papers.

Had tea with Sir Desmond, and reported that the matter did not look too hopeful. He was surprised. I remarked that, clearly, he had not read the Financial Times this morning.

‘Never do,’ he told me. I was surprised. He is a banker after all.

‘Can’t understand it,’ he explained. ‘It’s too full of economic theory.’

I asked him why he bought it and carried it about under his arm. He explained that it was part of the uniform. He said it took him thirty years to understand Keynes’s economics and just when he’d finally got the hang of it everyone started getting hooked on those new-fangled monetarist ideas. Books like I want to be free by Milton Shulman.

Presumably he means Free To Choose by Milton Friedman, but I share his feelings and doubts.

He asked me why they are all called Milton, and said he was still stuck on Milton Keynes. I corrected him: ‘Maynard Keynes.’ He said he was sure there was a Milton Keynes, I felt the conversation should be abandoned then and there, and I opened up his copy of the FT and showed him our Minister’s speech to the Architectural Association last night in which he attacked skyscraper blocks. This speech has attracted much favourable publicity and must be reckoned a problem for us now.

Sir Desmond insisted that the bank’s new block is not a skyscraper. Nonetheless, it has thirty-eight storeys on current plans, and he is asking for an extra six storeys.

The Minister, on the other hand, is talking about a maximum tolerable height of eight storeys.

The Minister is further encouraged by his party’s manifesto, which contained a promise to prevent many more high-rise buildings. But this problem is more easily dealt with. I explained to Sir Desmond that there is an implicit pact offered to every Minister by his senior officials: if the Minister will help us implement the opposite policy to the one to which he is pledged (which once he is in office he can see is obviously undesirable and/or unworkable) we will help him to pretend that he is in fact doing what he said he was going to do in his Manifesto.