A Very Courageous Decision

by Graham McCann

  The actors, taken aback by such an uncompromising reaction, listened carefully to the writers’ reasons for resisting such a proposal. They needed a studio audience, Jay and Lynn said, to undermine unfriendly attacks. Without the sound of laughter, they argued, any senior politician or bureaucrat with an axe to grind could claim that the show was just unfunny and biased political troublemaking, and thus pressurise the BBC into dropping it as soon as possible. ‘Three hundred people, randomly selected, watching in the studio and laughing their heads off,’ said Lynn, ‘was our insurance policy.’31

  There was also something warm and welcoming about the sound of laughter in the studio. Yes Minister could easily have ended up as a sort of treat for the middle-class elite, and one reason why it had avoided such a fate was the fact that it used the reassuring appeal of the traditional sitcom to attract a much broader audience. It would thus seem perverse, after dodging the line of least resistance for so long, all of a sudden to repackage the show as something self-consciously worthy and lofty. Yes Minister was, and would always be, a satire for the nation, not for the niche.

  The actors saw the writers’ point and dropped their demands just as suddenly as they had raised them. The show would go ahead as planned, and be recorded in front of a studio audience.

  Produced and directed once again by Peter Whitmore, the one-hour seasonal special, entitled ‘Party Games’, was broadcast on Monday, 17 December 1984 at 8.30 p.m. on BBC2. Set, appropriately enough, during the run-up to Christmas in Whitehall, the story quickly reacquainted viewers with Jim Hacker, who was now not only Minister at the DAA but also his party’s new Chairman.

  Seated in his office, Hacker is preoccupied with two pressing matters. One concerns the huge piles of Christmas cards that Woolley has divided up depending on the importance of the recipient and the style of signature required (an onerous annual chore that the then Chancellor, Nigel Lawson, had told the writers about32), and the other concerns the EEC directive to standardise the ‘Euro-sausage’ (re-categorising all home-grown sausages as ‘the emulsified high-fat offal tube’), which he knows is bound to anger and alienate British voters.

  Sir Humphrey, meanwhile, has rushed off for an urgent meeting with Sir Arnold Robinson, the Cabinet Secretary. Sir Arnold confides to Sir Humphrey that he has decided to retire early in the New Year, and will soon have to let the Prime Minister know his recommendation for his successor. Sir Humphrey takes his cue and asks Sir Arnold what he plans to do in his retirement (‘It’s just that there might be jobs you could pick up, where you could serve the country, which your successor, whoever he might be, could put your way – er, persuade you to undertake …’). Sir Arnold mentions a few ideas – the chairmanship of the Opera House Trust, the Chancellorship of Oxford, the Deputy Chairmanship of the Bank of England, Head of the Security Commission, the Presidency of the Anglo-Caribbean Association – while Sir Humphrey casually takes a few notes. ‘Well,’ says Sir Humphrey, ‘I’m sure that any successor worth his salt would be able to arrange these, Arnold.’ After being further reassured that such a successor – ‘the right successor’ – would also ensure that the odd past error of judgement was kept under wraps, Sir Arnold assures Sir Humphrey that his name is now heading his one-name list of candidates.

  Back in Hacker’s office, Sir Humphrey breaks the news to his Minister:

  The relationship, which I might tentatively venture to aver has been not without some degree of reciprocal utility and perhaps even occasional gratification, is approaching a point of irreversible bifurcation, and, to be brief, is in the propinquity of its ultimate regrettable termination.

  Hacker, once he thinks he has deciphered this announcement, fears that Sir Humphrey must have some kind of terrible disease, until Sir Humphrey assures him that they will still be seeing each other regularly, ‘once a week at least’. Upon realising that he is now in the presence of the Cabinet Secretary designate, Hacker is both relieved and fearful, noting not only that the Prime Minister will have to suffer what he has been suffering, but also that Sir Humphrey, ominously, will soon be advising the PM on the respective merits of his various Ministers.

  The news is made public at the staff Christmas drinks party, where a well-oiled Hacker toasts his old tormentor’s future. Driving home very slowly, he is stopped by the police, who advise him to let his wife take over the wheel. The following day he is chastised by Sir Humphrey, in his new capacity as Cabinet Secretary, for being involved in such an incident. Fortunately for Hacker, however, the Home Secretary has also been caught driving while drunk, which is all the more embarrassing seeing as he is responsible for the latest ‘Don’t Drink and Drive’ campaign, and, unlike Hacker’s error of judgement, the misdemeanour has made the front page of the papers.

  Soon after, it is announced that the Prime Minister is going to retire early in the New Year. Hacker, putting two and two together, concludes that the PM has been hanging on until he is sure that the now disgraced Home Secretary, whom he has always disliked, will not have a chance of succeeding him.

  When asked by his wife whom he thinks are the main candidates to take over, he replies that they will probably be Eric, the current Chancellor, or Duncan, the Foreign Secretary. Mulling over their respective prospects, he is torn as to which one he should support. ‘If I support Eric and Duncan gets it, well, that’s it. And if I support Duncan and Eric gets it, well, that’s it, too.’ Annie suggests that it might be best if he supports neither of them. ‘Then whichever of them gets it,’ he protests, ‘that’s it!’

  When pressed, he makes a typical Hackeresque decision. He will be backing ‘Duncan … Or Eric’.

  Both candidates proceed to solicit his support. Eric confides that, if elected, he will make Jim Foreign Secretary. Duncan, on the other hand, hints that, if he is elected, Jim will be made the next Chancellor. He duly pledges his support to each of them.

  Sir Humphrey and Sir Arnold, meanwhile, have also been running the rule over Eric and Duncan’s chances, and both candidates have come up wanting. ‘It’s like asking which lunatic should run the asylum,’ mutters Sir Arnold. ‘The trouble is,’ moans Sir Humphrey, ‘they’re both interventionists. They both have foolish notions about running the country themselves if they become Prime Minister.’ Another danger is that each of them represents an internal faction, so the triumph of either will soon divide the Government.

  What is needed, the two grandees agree, is a compromise candidate: someone who is ‘malleable … flexible … likeable … no firm opinions … no bright ideas … not intellectually committed … without the strength of purpose to change anything … someone who you know can be manipulated, er, “professionally guided”, leaving the business of government in the hands of the experts …’. Both Sir Humphrey and Sir Arnold, after reflecting separately on such a portfolio of personal qualities, come to the same conclusion, and start sniggering to themselves.

  When Woolley arrives and joins them, they cannot resist sounding him out about their new plan:

  SIR HUMPHREY:

  What would you say to your present master as the next Prime Minister?

  WOOLLEY:

  [Dumbfounded] The Minister?

  SIR HUMPHREY:

  Yes.

  WOOLLEY:

  Mr Hacker?

  SIR HUMPHREY:

  Yes.

  WOOLLEY:

  As Prime Minister?

  SIR HUMPHREY:

  Yes.

  [Woolley pulls back a shirt cuff and checks his watch]

  SIR HUMPHREY:

  Are you in a hurry?

  WOOLLEY:

  Er, no. I’m just checking to see it wasn’t April the First.

  SIR ARNOLD:

  Are you suggesting that your Minister is not up to the job of Prime Minister?

  WOOLLEY:

  Oh, no, Sir Arnold. It’s not for me to, ah, well, I mean, of course I’m sure he’s, er … oh gosh!

  SIR ARNOLD:

  There is a considerable body of opinion that can
see many advantages in the appointment.

  SIR HUMPHREY:

  For Britain.

  SIR ARNOLD:

  For Britain.

  WOOLLEY:

  Er, yes, well … er, yes …

  SIR HUMPHREY:

  So we trust you to ensure that your Minister does nothing incisive, or divisive, over the next few weeks?

  SIR ARNOLD:

  Avoids anything controversial.

  SIR HUMPHREY:

  Expresses no firm opinion about anything at all. Now, is that quite clear?

  WOOLLEY:

  Er, yes, well, I think that’s probably what he was planning to do anyway.

  It is agreed that the two main candidates will have to step aside for such a compromise figure to emerge as the new favourite, but Sir Arnold is confident that, once Sir Humphrey has taken a look at their MI5 files, such an occurrence will start to seem surprisingly likely. Sure enough, there is enough dirt in there to cause Sir Humphrey to push ahead with the plan.

  Summoning Hacker to the Chief Whip’s office, Sir Humphrey proceeds to manoeuvre him into position:

  SIR HUMPHREY:

  There are certain items of confidential information which, whilst in theory might be susceptible to innocent interpretation, do nevertheless contain a sufficient element of, shall we say, ambiguity, so that were they to be presented in a less than generous manner to an uncharitable mind, they might be a source of considerable embarrassment, even conceivably a hazard, were they to impinge on the deliberations of an office of more than usual sensitivity.

  HACKER:

  I’m sorry?

  CHIEF WHIP:

  He is talking about security question marks!

  HACKER:

  Security? What do you mean?

  CHIEF WHIP:

  Secrets.

  HACKER:

  Yes, I know what security means! But what do you mean?

  CHIEF WHIP:

  I’m not allowed to know.

  HACKER:

  Why not??

  CHIEF WHIP:

  Security.

  SIR HUMPHREY:

  So you see, Minister, since in the PM’s absence you are deputising on Party matters, perhaps I can show you this …

  [He hands Hacker a file]

  SIR HUMPHREY:

  It’s the security file on the Chancellor of the Exchequer …

  Hacker, reaching hurriedly for his glasses, tries hard not to seem excited as he scans the lurid contents: ‘The dirty old … You wouldn’t have thought he’d have the time, would you?!’ Sir Humphrey then hands Hacker the security file on the Foreign Secretary. ‘Astounding!’ gasps the Minister. Prodded by the Chief Whip into the realisation that all of these scandals waiting to happen must rule both figures out of the running for the top job in Government, Hacker agrees that there is an urgent need to find another candidate – one who is ‘sound, likeable, flexible, normal, solvent and acceptable to both wings of the Party’. Sir Humphrey cannot resist adding one more thing to this list: ‘And someone who understands how to take advice, Minister’.

  Hacker, struggling to conceal his own ambition, is shaken and excited when both the Chief Whip and Sir Humphrey suggest that he puts himself up for the position. Slowly shedding his affectation of modesty like an unusually coy cabaret artiste, he eventually accepts the invitation, and asks for some advice:

  HACKER:

  Wouldn’t it be enough to start campaigning, just let people know that I want the job?

  CHIEF WHIP:

  Quite the reverse, I think. Better to let people know you don’t want it.

  HACKER:

  Would that be enough?

  SIR HUMPHREY:

  Well, as long as you tell everybody you don’t want it, yes.

  CHIEF WHIP:

  Leave the campaigning to me. If anybody asks you, simply say you have no ambitions in that direction.

  HACKER:

  Yes, of course, but supposing somebody was to say, ‘Does that mean you refuse to stand?’ You know how these media people try to trap you.

  SIR HUMPHREY:

  Well, Minister, it’s not my place, but on previous occasions the generally acceptable answer has been: ‘While one does not seek the office, one has pledged oneself to the service of one’s country, and if one’s friends were to persuade one that that was the best way one could serve, one might reluctantly have to accept the responsibility whatever one’s own private wishes might be’.

  HACKER:

  [Hurriedly scribbling in his notebook] ‘… private wishes might be’. Yes, I think I’ve got that!

  He is then told that there are two more things for him to do. First, he needs, as Party Chairman, to advise Eric (‘the pervert’) and Duncan (‘the swindler’) privately to stand down, and then he needs to stage-manage some kind of sudden public success to raise his profile.

  The first task is discharged with remarkably little fuss, once Hacker has resolved to get his hands nice and dirty again. Rather than be seen to want to ruin his two colleagues, he convinces them both, discreetly, that he is desperate to save them from scandal. Grateful for his protection, they duly drop out of the race.

  Hacker is less confident about completing the other task satisfactorily, as he complains that he is already ‘up to my neck in the Euro-sausage’ and is running out of time. It is at this point that Sir Humphrey, once again, arrives, Jeeves-like, to find a swift solution.

  He arranges for Hacker to have a word – or rather to sit quietly while he has a word – with the European Commissioner about ‘our little sausage problem’. It does not take long for Sir Humphrey to convince the Commissioner, in the interests of harmony, to rename the Euro-sausage ‘the British sausage’ – thus handing Hacker his timely public triumph.

  All of the remaining pieces of the plot fall neatly into place, and The Rt Hon. James Hacker ends up in Sir Humphrey’s office, waiting anxiously for the news that he has been elected unopposed as the new leader of his party. With Woolley eagerly accepting his invitation to remain his Principal Private Secretary (‘Gosh!’), all that is left is for Hacker to receive confirmation of the internal election result. When the telephone finally rings, a poker-faced Sir Humphrey takes the call and then, as the agitated Hacker points at himself hopefully and asks, ‘Is it …??’ Sir Humphrey replies calmly: ‘Yes … Prime Minister.’

  For an instant, Hacker looks astonished, and then, his expression suddenly becalmed, he slowly slides his right hand inside his jacket in the manner of Napoleon. He has won. He has made it to Number Ten.

  Jay and Lynn had made it, too. They had gone back and moved on.

  ‘Party Games’, watched by 8.2 million viewers (BBC2’s biggest audience of the Christmas period),33 was an unqualified triumph. Without losing any of its trademark accuracy, comic elegance or keen intelligence, and while staying true to the characters and the context, the extended special had simultaneously reinvigorated the old show and brought about its reinvention.

  Yes Minister had come to a natural conclusion. Yes Prime Minister was now set to take its place.

  PART THREE

  The greatest teacher of all in Parliament, the head-master of the nation, the great elevator of the country – so far as Parliament elevates it – must be the Prime Minister; he has an influence, an authority, a facility in giving a great tone to discussion, or a mean tone, which no other man has.

  Walter Bagehot

  Our most obvious defects spring from the constitutional position of Civil Servants. They are at all times answerable to some Minister who will get the praise and blame for what they do, and this determines many of their actions and reactions.

  Sir Edward Bridges

  9

  Yes, Prime Minister

  What do we do now?

  There was something rather apt about Jay and Lynn having to make Jim Hacker seem like a real Prime Minister. After all, real-life politicians had been trying to seem like a real Prime Minister ever since the latter part of the eighteenth ce
ntury.

  Far from having been born in broad daylight and framed by a clear constitutional definition, the role had emerged through the murkiness of Parliamentary convention, and only then as a term of derogation rather than approbation. Sir Robert Walpole, who was the first in a succession of First Lords of the Treasury to be associated with the term, never recognised it as a title, let alone embraced it as an office, and even when, eventually, the title did start being treated as if it was something positive and semi-official, no one really bothered to outline the proper parameters of its powers.1

  In stark contrast, then, to the American Presidency, which has always been rooted in rules and comes to each incumbent with the equivalent of a set of detailed stage directions, the British Premiership has only been animated through a volatile mixture of imitation, imagination and improvisation. The consequence has been that all modern Prime Ministers have been left to re-envision the role according to their own personal strengths and political circumstances. From Disraeli to Cameron, from Churchill to Thatcher, from Lloyd George to Blair, the only reliable test of the legitimacy of the interpretation has been whether or not they can get away with it.

  Antony Jay knew all of this very well indeed, having immersed himself in the biographies of British leaders during his preparation for the mid-1970s series A Prime Minister on Prime Ministers. He had also picked up the odd tip from the ‘star’ of that series, Harold Wilson himself (‘I remember one occasion [in ‘Party Games’]. We had Jim ask if he wanted to be Prime Minister, and had him reply, “I have no ambitions in that direction, but I suppose if my colleagues pressed me I might have to consent.” Harold said that was the correct reply’2). Jay was thus eminently well placed and primed to judge how plausible, or not, it would be to elevate Jim Hacker to this ill-defined but historically exalted position.