The Complete Yes Minister

statesmen need holidays. I agreed.

‘Let’s go to Kingsbury Down,’ she said.

‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Where is it?’

She stared at me. ‘Only where we spent our honeymoon, darling.’ Funny, I’d forgotten the name of the place. I tried to remember what it looked like.

‘It’s where you first explained to me your theory about the effect of velocity of circulation on the net growth of the money supply.’

I remembered it well. ‘Oh yes, I know the place then,’ I said.

Annie turned towards her bedside lamp. ‘Did you get that, boys?’ she muttered into it.

[A startling development took place on the following day. The Special Branch contacted Sir Humphrey Appleby and Bernard Woolley with the news that a terrorist hit list had been discovered, and Jim Hacker’s name appeared on it as a potential target.

The list apparently was drawn up by a group calling itself the International Freedom Army – Ed.]

SIR BERNARD WOOLLEY RECALLS:¹

We could not imagine who on earth could possibly want to assassinate the Minister. He was so harmless.

Nevertheless, Sir Humphrey Appleby and I were fully agreed that it was not possible to take risks with the Minister’s life, and so the whole paraphernalia of security would have to be brought out to protect him.

[Hacker’s diary continues – Ed.]

April 2nd

Bernard greeted me like a mother hen this morning. He asked after my health with an earnest and solicitous attitude.

I thought perhaps it was because I was a little late at the office. I hadn’t slept too well – ‘I feel like death,’ I remarked.

Bernard whispered to Sir Humphrey, ‘Perhaps that’s just as well,’ a comment which I did not understand at the time but which I now regard as having been in the poorest of taste.

I was actually rather cheerful. My leak had worked. A story had appeared in the Express: HACKER MOVES TO CURB PHONE TAPS. I was described as an informed source, as agreed, and Walter had not taken a by-line – the story was ‘from our Political Staff’.

Sir Humphrey wondered audibly where they’d got the information, and stared at me. Naturally I admitted nothing.

[It has been said that the ship of state is the only type of ship that leaks from the top – Ed.]

‘Anyway,’ I added, ‘this leak only confirms my determination to act on this matter.’

Humphrey asked me if I’d considered all the implications. This is generally the Civil Service way of asking me if I realised that I was talking rubbish. In this case, as it was to turn out, I had not quite considered all the implications.

So I replied that free citizens have a right to privacy. An absolute right.

How could I have said such a thing?

But I didn’t know then what I knew just five minutes later. Those bastards hadn’t told me.

‘Suppose . . .’ suggested Sir Humphrey smoothly, ‘suppose MI5 had reason to suspect that these “free citizens” were, shall we say to take a purely hypothetical example, planning to assassinate a Minister of the Crown?’

I made a little speech. I spoke of the freedom of the British people, and how this is more important than the lives of a few Ministers. I said that freedom is indivisible, whereas Ministers are expendable. ‘Men in public life must expect to be the targets of cranks and fanatics. A Minister has the duty to set his own life at naught, to stand up and say “Here I am, do your worst!” and not cower in craven terror behind electronic equipment and secret microphones and all the hideous apparatus of the police state.’ Me and my big mouth.

Sir Humphrey and Bernard looked at each other. The former tried to speak but I made it clear that I would brook no arguments.

‘No Humphrey, I don’t want to hear any more about it. You deal in evasions and secrets. But politicians in a free country must be seen to be the champions of freedom and truth. Don’t try and give me the arguments in favour of telephone tapping – I can find them in Stalin’s memoirs.’

‘Actually,’ quibbled Bernard, ‘Stalin didn’t write any memoirs. He was too secretive. He was afraid people might read them.’

Humphrey succeeded in interrupting us.

‘Minister,’ he insisted, ‘you must allow me to say one more thing on this matter.’

I told him that he might say one sentence, but he should keep it brief.

‘The Special Branch have found your name on a death list,’ he said.

I thought I must have misheard.

‘What?’ I said.

‘The Special Branch have found your name on a death list,’ he repeated.