The Complete Yes Minister

SIR BERNARD WOOLLEY RECALLS:³

I well remember that I felt fearfully downcast after that fateful meeting. Because I couldn’t help wondering if the Minister was right. I voiced this fear to old Humphrey. ‘Most unlikely,’ he replied. ‘What about?’

I explained that I too was worried about ends versus means. I asked Humphrey if I too would end up as a moral vacuum. His reply surprised me. ‘I hope so,’ he told me. ‘If you work hard enough.’

This made me feel more melancholy than before. At that time, you see, I still believed that if it was our job to carry out government policies we ought to believe in them.

Sir Humphrey shook his head and left the room. Later that day I received a memorandum from him. I have it still.

Memorandum From: The Permanent Secretary To: B.W.

I have been considering your question. Please bear in mind the following points.

I have served eleven governments in the past thirty years. If I had believed in all their policies I would have been:

  1) passionately committed to keeping out of the Common Market.

  2) passionately committed to going into the Common Market.

  3) utterly convinced of the rightness of nationalising steel.

  4) utterly convinced of the rightness of denationalising steel.

  5) utterly convinced of the rightness of renationalising steel.

  6) fervently committed to retaining capital punishment.

  7) ardently committed to abolishing capital punishment.

  8) a Keynesian.

  9) a Friedmanite.

10) a grammar school preserver.

11) a grammar school destroyer.

12) a nationalisation maniac.

13) a privatisation freak.

14) a stark, staring, raving schizophrenic.

H.A.

The following day he sent for me, to check that I was fully seized of his ideas and had taken them on board.

Of course, his argument was irrefutable. I freely admitted it. And yet I was still downcast. Because, as I explained to Appleby, I felt that I needed to believe in something.

He suggested that we should both believe in stopping Hacker from informing the PM.

Of course he was right. Once the PM knew of this business, there would have to be an enquiry. It would be like Watergate, in which, as you know, the investigation of a trivial break-in led to one ghastly revelation after another and finally to the downfall of a President. The Golden Rule is, was, always has been and always will be: Don’t Lift Lids Off Cans of Worms.

‘Everything is connected to everything else,’ Sir Humphrey explained. ‘Who said that?’

I ventured a guess that it might have been the Cabinet Secretary.

‘Nearly right,’ Sir Humphrey encouraged me. ‘Actually, it was Lenin.’

He then set me the task – to stop my Minister from talking to the PM.

At first I couldn’t see how this could be achieved, and was unwise enough to say. This earned me a sharp rebuke.

‘Work it out,’ he snapped. ‘I thought you were supposed to be a high-flyer – or are you really a low-flyer supported by occasional gusts of wind?’

I could see that this was one of those make-or-break moments in one’s career. I went off and had a quiet think, and I asked myself some questions.

Could I stop my Minister from seeing the PM? Clearly not.

Could Sir Humphrey? No.

Could my friends in the Private Office at Number Ten? Or the Cabinet Office? No.

Therefore the approach had to be through the political side. I needed someone close to the PM, someone who was able to frighten Hacker.

Suddenly it was clear. There’s only one figure whose job it is to put the frighteners on MPs – the Chief Whip.

I planned my strategy carefully. Hacker had asked me to phone the diary secretary in the PM’s private office for him, to make an appointment. I worked out that if Sir Humphrey had a word with the Cabinet Secretary, he (the Cabinet Secretary) could have a word with the PM’s diary secretary, then all of them could have a word with the Whip’s office.

The Chief Whip would see the point at once. When Hacker arrived to see the PM the Chief Whip would meet him, and say that the PM was rather busy and had asked him to talk to Hacker instead.

I requested a meeting with Appleby, and told him of my plan. He nodded approvingly. So I lifted up his phone.

‘What are you doing, Bernard?’ he asked.

‘I thought you wanted to talk to the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Humphrey,’ I replied with mock innocence.

He took the phone from me, and made the call. I sat and listened. When it was done Appleby replaced the receiver, sat back in his chair and eyed me speculatively.

‘Tell me, Bernard, do you – as his Private Secretary – feel obliged to tell the Minister of this conversation?’

‘What conversation?’ I replied.

He offered me a sherry, congratulated me, and told me that I would be a moral vacuum yet.

I believe that it was at this moment that my future was assured. From then on I was earmarked as a future head of the Home Civil Service.

[Hacker’s diary continues – Ed.]

September 8th