Sir Humphrey Appleby's Last Stand

In honour of the return of Yes, Prime Minister to UK screens next week, I thought I'd dust off a blog I wrote back in 2004, at a time when civil service jobs were facing the axe and student fees had just been introduced.

‘Face it Humphrey, there’s no way you can spin yourself out of this one.’

‘With respect, minister, you can’t actually spin yourself out of something at all.’

Jim Hacker eyed Bernard, his private secretary, quizzically. Life was full of mysteries – how the Department of Administrative Affairs had managed to survive successive governments without him losing his post being one of them. Somehow the whole department had become so lost in the Whitehall bureaucracy that the Prime Minister had either forgotten that it existed or had deliberately ignored its presence. Jim had a brief memory of having become Prime Minister himself, but Sir Humphrey had insisted that this was nothing more than a bad dream, although he failed to specify for whom the dream had been bad – he could scarcely have done a worse job than the current incumbent. Of all life’s mysteries, however, the most immediately pressing was how Bernard always managed to find something to pick out from even the most innocuous remarks – or was it inconspicuous? – never mind, he just wouldn’t use the word in conversation.

He allowed his eyebrow to raise a quarter inch, an action that, in their long association, Bernard had learned to take as a signal that he should make a more complete explanation.

‘It’s just that if you spin you just go round and round,’ Bernard went on, making circular motions with his right hand. ‘You’d need to spiral to actually move to somewhere else.’

Jim’s eyebrows assumed the disappointed pose, a signal which Bernard seemed not to have learnt.

‘The fact remains,’ he continued, ‘that this time Sir Humphrey has lost.’

‘Lost, minister?’ Sir Humphrey stood in front of Jim’s desk, a folio of papers held tightly to his immaculately tailored, pin-striped suit.

‘Yes, there are going to be significant lay-offs throughout the Civil Service.’

‘I hardly think that is likely, minister.’

‘It’s been announced, Humphrey. The Chancellor made a public statement yesterday.’

‘Announcements aren’t statements of fact, minister, they are simply an indication of a minister’s desires. You’ll recall that our Prime Minister promised not to introduce top up fees for university students.’

‘Education, education, education,’ said Jim.

‘A most sophisticated slogan, minister,’ said Humphrey, with barely concealed sarcasm.

‘It wasn’t mine,’ Jim defended himself. ‘I wouldn’t come up with something like that.’

‘Quite,’ agreed Humphrey, ‘and yet, here we are a mere seven years later, putting through the paperwork that will bring in the very student fees we were told would not be imposed.’

‘Times change,’ said Jim. ‘University degrees don’t grow on trees, you know.’

‘Actually the certificates are made of paper,’ Bernard interrupted.

Jim ignored him. ‘Laying off civil servants is an entirely different matter,’ he continued. ‘It’s something that will be seen through and the public will appreciate that the saving will help to improve their public services.’

‘Without the Civil Service there will be no public services,’ said Humphrey.

‘That’s not how the public will see it.’

‘But that’s because the public don’t know what we do.’

Jim smiled. ‘You know something, Humphrey,’ he said, ‘in the twenty-odd years I’ve been here, I don’t think I’ve ever worked out what you do either.’

Humphrey looked offended. ‘We facilitate and administrate, minister,’ he said coldly.

‘Yes, but what do you actually do?’

‘Facilitate and administrate,’ repeated Humphrey.

‘It’s no good repeating your mantra at me,’ said Jim. ‘I know what you say you do, but I mean, what would happen if you didn’t do what you do? Would the country stop working? Would the hospitals stop healing or the schools stop teaching?’

‘Not immediately, minister, no,’ Humphrey conceded, ‘but they would suffer impediments due to the lack of administration and facilitation. Administration and facilitation are vitally important.’

His voice seemed to have a strained quality and Jim turned his head and eyed the man cynically. ‘What’s the matter, Humphrey?’ he asked. ‘Why does it worry you so much about these lay-offs? Is your name on the list?’

‘No, minister.’

‘Then what’s the problem?’

‘It’s not just the redundancies, minister, there are also talks of relocations.’

‘You mean moving departments out of London?’

‘Yes, minister.’

‘Well, I can’t see a problem with that,’ said Jim. ‘Spreads the public sector jobs around a bit, helps relieve the commuter congestion.’

‘This department is one of those being relocated,’ said Humphrey.

Jim shrugged. ‘What of it?’ he asked.

‘We won’t be near to government. How can we be expected to work efficiently when our lines of communication are cut off?’

‘Our lines of communication won’t be cut off,’ Jim corrected him. ‘This is the twenty-first century, we have email…’

‘We also have spam, hackers and viruses.’

‘We’ve got telephones.’

‘Operated by privatised corporations.’

‘We’ve got the postal service.’

‘Yes.’ Sir Humphrey’s tone conveyed the kind of tired admission that is usually associated with admitting ownership of a particularly unruly child.

Jim picked up the tone and made no attempt to defend the point. ‘Carrier pigeons?’ he suggested with a crooked smile.

Humphrey raised an eyebrow.

Jim leaned back in his chair. ‘It’s not as if we’ll be at the end of the Earth,’ he said.

‘The Earth hasn’t got…’

‘Bernard!’

‘Sorry, minister.’

‘I mean, we’ll still be in England, won’t we? It’s not as if they’re moving the department out to India, is it?’

Humphrey said nothing. Jim gave him a worried look. ‘Is it?’ he asked.

‘No, minister.’

‘Then what’s the problem?’

‘They’re sending us to Leeds, minister.’

‘To Leeds?’

‘Yes, minister.’

Jim leapt up from his seat, banging his left knee in the process. ‘Why didn’t you say?’ he demanded, hobbling around the room. ‘We can’t afford to be moved to Leeds – we’d be out of touch, away from the heart of government.’

‘Yes, minister,’ agreed Humphrey.

‘The Chancellor’s moves have to be stopped.’

‘Yes, minister.’

Jim paused in his limping. ‘I suppose he might not be planning to actually do anything,’ he said. ‘This could be just another one of those statements of policy, couldn’t it?’

‘They’ve already passed the necessary paperwork to us, minister,’ said Humphrey.

‘You mean we’re having to administrate our own relocation?’

‘We are here to administrate and facilitate, minister. Who else is there?’

‘Quite.’ Jim sat back down, a look of intense concentration on his face. ‘I suppose this paperwork will take quite a while to process, won’t it?’

‘There is rather a lot of it, minister.’

‘And there’s always the danger that, in a large bureaucracy, some of it will go missing.’

‘Indubitably, minister.’

‘So, if a relocation order were, say, to be lost, it wouldn’t be economical to spend time and resources looking for it, would it?’

‘No, minister.’

Jim nodded. ‘I think we’re both on the same page, Humphrey,’ he said. ‘I trust that I can leave things up to you.’

Humphrey smiled warmly. ‘Yes, minister,’ he said.