The Complete Yes Minister

‘Your trouble, Alex,’ I said, ‘is that you can’t take yes for an answer.’

‘Because otherwise,’ he continued as if I hadn’t even spoken, ‘we do the feature on Ministers ratting on manifestos.’

Clearly I shall now have to stand by that promise. It’s fortunate that I have every intention of doing so.

[The following day The Mail ran the story, exactly as predicted in Hacker’s diary (see below). That night Sir Humphrey’s diary contains the following entry – Ed.]

Horrible shock.

A story in today’s Mail about the Glenloch Island base.

I read it on the 8.32 from Haslemere to Waterloo. Was seized instantly by what Dr Hindley calls a panic attack. A sort of tight feeling in the chest, I felt I couldn’t breathe, and I had to get up and walk up and down the compartment which struck one or two of the regulars on the 8.32 as a bit strange. Or perhaps I just think that because of the panic attack.

Fortunately Valium did the trick as the day wore on, and I’ll take a few Mogadon³ tonight.

I tell myself that no one will ever connect that incident with me, and that it’s all ancient history anyway, and that that’s the last that anyone will want to know about it.

I tell myself that – but somehow it’s not helping!

Why has this come up now, so many years later, when I thought it was all forgotten?

If only there was someone I could talk to about this.

Oh my God . . .

[Hacker’s diary continues – Ed.]

November 21st

They ran that story in The Mail today. Quite amusing.

November 22nd

Today was the happiest day of my ministerial life.

All my prayers were answered.

As Humphrey and I were finishing up our weekly departmental meeting I asked him if he’d seen the story in yesterday’s Mail.

‘I’m not sure,’ he said.

I reminded him. I knew he must have seen it, someone must have drawn his attention to it. ‘You know,’ I added, ‘about that frightful cock-up thirty years ago over the terms of that Scottish island base.’

Now, as I think back, he seemed to flinch a little as I said ‘that frightful cock-up’. Though I must say, I wasn’t really aware of it at the time.

Anyway, he did remember the article, and he said that he believed that he had glanced at it, yes.

‘I must say,’ I said, chuckling, ‘I think it’s pretty funny – forty million quid down the tube. Someone really boobed there, didn’t they?’

He nodded and smiled, a little wanly.

‘Still, it couldn’t happen in your Department could it?’

‘No,’ he said with absolute firmness. ‘Oh no. Absolutely.’

I said that I’d been wondering who it was.

‘That, Minister, is something that we shall never know.’

I pointed out that it must be on the files. Everything is always put in writing, as he so constantly reminds me.

Humphrey agreed that it would be on the record somewhere, but it would take ages to find out and it’s obviously not worth anyone’s time.

‘Actually, you’re wrong there,’ I said. ‘The Mail are doing a big feature on it when the papers are released under the Thirty-Year Rule. I’ve promised them a free run of all the files.’

Humphrey literally rocked backwards on his feet.

‘Minister!’

I was slightly shaken by his anger. Or was it anger? I couldn’t tell.

‘It’s all right, isn’t it?’ I asked anxiously.

Yes, it was anger! ‘All right? All right? No, it is certainly not all right.’

I asked why not. He told me it was ‘impossible and unthinkable’. That didn’t sound like much of an explanation to me, and I said as much.

‘It . . . it’s . . . top security, Minister.’

‘A few barracks?’