The Complete Yes Minister

March 5th

Had a very worrying conversation with Roy, my driver, today. Didn’t see him after recording the broadcast yesterday, because I was given a relief driver.

Roy asked me how the recording went. I said it had gone very well, that I’d talked about government partnership with industry, and that there was a most interesting project going on up in the Midlands.

I assumed he wouldn’t have heard of it. I was wrong.

‘You don’t mean the Solihull project, sir?’

I was astonished. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You’ve heard of it.’

Roy chuckled.

I waited, but he said nothing. ‘What are you laughing at?’ I asked.

‘Nothing, sir,’ he said. Then he chuckled again.

He’d obviously heard something.

‘What have you heard?’ I asked.

‘Nothing. Really.’

I could see his face in the rear-view mirror. He was smiling. I didn’t like it.

He was obviously laughing at some aspect of the Solihull project. But what? For some reason, I felt a need to defend it. To my driver? I must be cracking up. But I said, ‘We regard it as a shining example of a successful collaboration between government and private enterprise.’

Roy chuckled again. He was really getting on my nerves.

‘Roy, what’s so funny?’ I demanded. ‘What do you know about all this?’

‘No more than you might pick up on about thirty journeys between the DAA and Mr Michael Bradley’s Office, 44 Farringdon Street, and 129 Birmingham Road, Solihull,’ he replied.

‘Thirty journeys?’ I was astonished. ‘Who with?’

‘Oh,’ said Roy cheerfully, ‘your predecessor, sir, and Sir Humphrey, mostly.’ He chuckled again. I could have killed him. What’s so bloody funny, I’d like to know? ‘Very cheerful they were on the first few trips. They kept talking about shining examples of successful collaboration and suchlike. Then . . .’, he paused for effect, ‘. . . then the gloom started to come down, if you know what I mean, sir?’

Gloom? What did he mean, gloom? ‘Gloom?’

‘Well, no, not gloom, exactly,’ said Roy and I relaxed momentarily. ‘More like desperation really.’

My own mood was also moving inexorably from gloom to desperation. ‘Desperation?’ I asked.

‘Well,’ said Roy. ‘You’re the one who knows the background, aren’t you, sir?’

I nodded. ‘Yes I am.’ I suppose I must have been a trifle unconvincing because my damn driver chuckled again.

‘Was there . . . um . . . any . . . er . . . any particular bit of the background you were thinking of?’ I tried to ask in a casual sort of way, still in a state of total mental chaos.

‘No,’ Roy said firmly. ‘I mean, when something’s fishy, it’s just fishy isn’t it? You don’t know which particular bit the smell’s coming from.’

‘Fishy?’ Did he know more than he was letting on? What’s fishy?

‘Well,’ continued Roy helpfully, ‘I mean, I don’t really know do I? For all I know Mr Bradley may be quite kosher, despite everything Sir Humphrey said about him. Still, you’d know more about all that than I do, sir. I’m just the driver.’

Yes, I thought bitterly. What do I know? I’m just the bloody Minister.

March 7th

I’ve spent the weekend wondering if I can get any more information out of Roy. Does he know more, or has he told me everything he knows? Perhaps he can find out more, on the driver’s network. Information is currency among the drivers. They leak all over the place. On the other hand, perhaps he’ll trade the information that I don’t know anything at all about the Solihull project – which could be very damaging to me, couldn’t it?

But the question is, how to find out if Roy knows any more without losing face myself. (Or losing any more face.) I’ve heard that drivers can be silenced with an MBE – can I get more information with the hint or promise of an MBE? But how would I drop the hint?

These are foolish and desperate thoughts. First I’ll try and get the truth out of my Permanent Secretary. Then I’ll try my Private Secretary. Only then will I turn to my driver.

It occurs to me, thinking generally around the problems that I’ve encountered in the last six months, that it is not possible to be a good Minister so long as the Civil Service is allowed complete control over its own recruitment. Perhaps it is impossible to stop the Civil Service appointing people in its own likeness, but we politicians ought to try to stop it growing like Frankenstein.

This whole matter of the Solihull project – which I am determined to get to the bottom of – has reminded me how incomplete is my picture of my Department’s activities. We politicians hardly ever know if information is being concealed, because the concealment is concealed too. We are only offered a choice of options, all of which are acceptable to the permanent officials, and in any case they force decisions on us the way magicians force cards on their audience in the three-card trick. ‘Choose any card, choose my card.’ But somehow we always choose the card they want us to choose. And how is it managed that we never seem to choose a course of action that the Civil Service doesn’t approve? Because we’re too busy to draft any of the documents ourselves, and he who drafts the document wins the day.