by Neil Elliot
There are some classics which remain eternally fresh — and this is one of them. "Yes Minister," and then "Yes Prime Minister" were BBC comedies from the 1980s. They portray the inner workings of government, and it could be any parliamentary government.
Although it was brilliant as a TV program, the book is just as good and adds material in a way that makes a more rounded picture. I'd love to give you a quote, but the comedy relies on the characters, and a short quote just wouldn't do it justice.
The star of the show is Jim Hacker, second rate minister become Prime Minister in a backroom deal that no-one, least of all himself, can quite work out. Hackers job is to stay in power, and to convince the public that he is doing a good job. His preoccupation is with what the newspapers think. And he can be a very wily politician on occasions. His nemesis is his civil service secretary, Sir Humphrey Appleby, whose job appears to be to keep everything running along nicely, at least for the civil service. The civil service is run as an employment service for the "old boy" network of Oxford and Cambridge graduates. Each of them has their own empires to run — Hack has to manage the government, and keep his ministers from betraying him (there’s a big streak of justifiable paranoia here). Appleby has to keep the conflicts between the various ministries from becoming too blatant. And there's a country to run — which sometimes seem to be incidental to the agendas of the two most powerful people in the country.
Is it ringing any bells yet? The reason I love this and keep returning to it is because it rings so true, it tells us what is going on in our parliament. It demonstrates the real agendas, which dominate in the corridors of power. How do I know? Because Margaret Thatcher commended it for its close observation to detail. Although it would seem to be a cynical approach, it is one I take great comfort from. The idea that the powerful are also competent is actually frightening. What might they do?
The program covers many different agenda; relations between the UK and Israel, cabinet leaks, education, the appointment of bishops (!), and civil service pay. It was this last which put me in mind of writing about this book for this month. On his first day in office, President Obama signed a decree freezing civil service pay in the USA. I was amazed to see the power wielded with the stroke of the presidential pen. The episode in Yes Prime Minister on civil service pay is instructive on the way that an apparent pay freeze can become a significant pay rise, and I hope that this was not what we were actually seeing.
This is a great book to read in short bursts, a chapter a day, if you can put it down. And you may find after a while that you don’t want to read it in public, you’ll be laughing too much.
