The Complete Yes Minister

‘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?

¹ Her Majesty’s Government.

² ‘No man is an Island, entire of itself . . . Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.’ – John Donne.

³ In conversation with the Editors.

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.