The Answer is Yes

It’s quite rare for me to actually read a book after someone’s been on my back about it, and much more so that I want to write a piece praising it afterwards. Naturally, it takes an exceptional book to lead to this exceptional turn of events. So this book, or these two books if I’m being pedantic, in the very first reading dove headfirst into my heart and have not resurfaced to this day. Ironically, this makes them, in their own parlance, ‘high flyers’. I would have gone on to call them the best books I have ever read, but I can’t bring myself to do that to Harry Potter. Thankfully these books, while fiction, are not fantasy, hence not directly comparable. Whatever you want to tell yourself, these books are much further from fantasy than you’d like them to be. It’s a tale taking place in the latter half of the 20th century, sometime in the 80’s and 90’s, in London, and it starts with the outcome of a general election. This tale has since gained high acclaim and literary immortality, and is known everywhere by the singular titles of ‘Yes Minister’ and ‘Yes Prime Minister’. 

Over here in India we don’t really have a thing for having politicians’ diaries and journals published; perhaps even less for reading them. But apparently this is quite a hit over there. Among these published diaries sits a fictitious one, with its own fictitious narrator, giving a detailed account of his fictitious experiences in his fictitious career as a Cabinet Minister in the British government. A simple man with a simple name: Jim Hacker. A former editor when he was in the Opposition, he can be characterized as adequately intelligent. After his party wins the general election he is made the Minister for Administrative Affairs, where he has his first encounter with the Civil Service. Thence begins a lengthy narrative of a career in government which we have the pleasure of enjoying in his own words.

Unlike the profusion of political parties we’re used to dealing with here, the United Kingdom had but two; referred exclusively as ‘the Government’ and ‘the Opposition’ throughout the story. The tiny island nation of the United Kingdom comprises England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland; and is divided into a number of constituencies. Hacker rises as an MP for a constituency in the midlands and remains in Opposition until the leader of his party assumes the post of Prime Minister and offers him the aforementioned role. The Prime Minister’s name, throughout this whole episode, is conspicuous by its absence. You will find him referred to as either ‘the Prime Minister’, or with the classic metonymy ‘Number Ten’. The writers of this book, Messrs. Jonathan Lynn and Antony Jay, have themselves assumed the role of the editors of Hacker’s diaries. This compilation of theirs does not only consist of Hacker’s accounts, which they opined could be ‘quite boring on their own’ in the editor’s note. They have instead taken the liberty to liven up the narrative with accounts from others close to Hacker during this period. Not only does this reveal to us events which Hacker overlooked (or which were deliberately concealed from him), but it also often creates glaring contradictions with Hacker’s version, much to the reader’s delight. The text is also regularly interrupted by the editors’ own explanatory notes, which only helps shape the perspective they would want the reader to take.

After Hacker’s own, the two narratives we find most frequently in the stories belong to the two other protagonists of the tale: Sir Humphrey Appleby and Bernard Woolley. They held the positions of the Permanent Secretary of the Department and Hacker’s Principal Private Secretary, respectively, all the while Hacker was the Minister for Administrative Affairs. Both of these characters have personalities as richly developed and intriguing as Hacker’s own. Bernard has been shown as a tough yet somewhat naive young man who possesses a great deal of wonderment about the nature of the Civil Service and government as a whole. Hacker himself refers to him several times as his most trusted and loyal advisor. He, too, often displays a certain fondness for Hacker and is never the origin of any schemes against him. He is consequently quite distressed at the idea of concealing something from Hacker, something his job almost constantly requires him to do, and Sir Humphrey often finds his work cut out for him when he has to convince Bernard of the propriety of a plan. He has been described occasionally as a ‘High Flyer’, which in Civil Service lingo means a person destined to rise to the top. Indeed, as the editors note in the introduction, Bernard is the Head of the Home Civil Service when he retires. Humphrey believes that such candidates should be given a ‘spell’ as a private secretary once; just to assess how well they handle the task of remaining loyal to both their minister and the Civil Service itself. That may not sound like a particularly challenging task, as you’d expect the government and the Civil Service to be on the same side. And you’d be wrong. Sir Humphrey himself is the embodiment of all the Civil Service’s ideals, beliefs and methods.

 The question of where Sir Humphrey Appleby gets all his notions deserves a spot next to such imponderables as the question of why the Universe exists. His thoughts and opinions about the Civil Service, government and his role in all of this at first may appear quite baffling. If one were to remind him that in a democracy, the Civil Service’s duty is to carry out the orders of the public’s elected representatives to the letter, one would throw him into a fit of hysterics. Then he would explain that in his view the noblest function that the Civil Service performs is to obstruct the ministers on almost all policy decisions that they try to make. And the Civil Service shares his view. His views about ministers and politicians in general will astound you, not in the least because you might find yourself agreeing with them.

“The politicians are not qualified to run the country,” he said once in so many words. While all the Civil Servants are impeccably trained in this art, the politicians are merely qualified to sign on the papers put in front of them. If they get a bit inquisitive, or try to make some policy decisions themselves, one has to stop them. Ironically, Humphrey does not disagree that it is his job to serve and help the ministers in their job to the best of his abilities, and would happily explain most cogently why that means he should block their ideas. And so he does to a perplexed Bernard, when the latter has trouble grasping why Hacker’s plan to make government transparent has to be stopped, in the very first story in the book. When Bernard insists that ‘the Minister wants open government,’ Humphrey replies, “We don’t give people what they want, if it’s not good for them. For instance, we wouldn’t give whisky to an alcoholic.”

Humphrey doesn’t see politicians as alcoholics, but as children, who throw something out today only to want it back tomorrow. And the reason is that the ultimate objective of any political party in power is to get re-elected, and so politicians judge the merits of any proposal using the singular criterion of what the public will say about that. While that is an important consideration in a democracy, Humphrey reasons that the minister’s questions about what the Times will say about it are far removed from the proper questions like a cost-benefit analysis of the proposal. And hence he regards it most irresponsible to let politicians be in charge of any decision. Even good decisions must be blocked as a matter of principle, for at the end of the day the Civil Service detests change itself. And the insistence that change is necessarily bad because the current system made Britain ‘what she is today,’ serves as the philosophy underlying the entire tale.

Hacker fit Humphrey’s definition of a minister perfectly, but he wasn’t as big a fool as Humphrey thought him to be. There are a few stories in which he has managed to emerge victorious in a rather impressive way. We learn about the workings of government as Hacker learns them; one of the most vital lessons being that simply articulating an idea is not enough to get the Civil Service to work on it. Here we are introduced to what serves as a formula for most of the stories: the quid pro quo. A deal, which can be done in two ways. You either tempt them with something to get what you want, or you get them in trouble and get what you want in exchange for getting them out of it. Naturally, the Civil Service usually favours the latter course, as it is painfully easy to scare politicians. A simple reminder about the fragility of their jobs and the possibility of being in the Opposition often does the trick. On the other hand, ministers have quite a negligible arsenal against the civil servants. Hence most of these stories are about an intense conflict between Hacker’s desire to make change and Humphrey’s steadfast stubbornness that ends in one of them making the other accept their way of things. Bernard has a role to play too, as he supports both of them alternately while maintaining confidentiality as best he can. All this makes reading these stories akin to watching bouts of wrestling.

I say wrestling, because these stories cannot ever qualify as bedtime stories for children, as the fight is never between the well-defined sides of good and evil. Instead, the reader must constantly decide whose side they are on. As a matter of principle, you would be on Hacker’s side, for he is not corrupt, he has a genuine desire to bring about good change and he is quite innocent in many ways. At the same time, however, he does worry extensively about the newspapers’ opinions, scraps good projects and hides the truth out of sheer paranoia, and ultimately is seen to care only about votes. Humphrey, on the other hand, cannot care less about the people’s opinions, who in his eyes don’t know what’s good for them. There are times, of course, when Humphrey’s tactics have ulterior motives, and he is quite adept at using his minister’s vulnerabilities to the advantage of his colleagues and himself. Then there are times, again, when he blocks Hacker out of pure principle. Bernard is quite innocent himself and often openly questions the Civil Service techniques, but is also gullible enough for Humphrey to be able to convince him easily.

The story does have someone who is genuinely loyal to Hacker and has a very strong moral compass: Dorothy Wainwright, who considers it her duty to get Hacker out of any troubles his officials may have dropped him in. Admittedly, though, Humphrey’s abilities of getting Hacker out of anything are much more effective than hers when he sees something in it for himself. Dorothy, however, supports Hacker throughout on principle alone, in her post as Hacker’s chief political advisor when he becomes Prime Minister. Though her ethics are never in question, at the end of the day there comes a limit on how much she can stick to them given that her sole job is to ensure that Hacker is re-elected. For instance, she cannot really tell Hacker to do something unpopular just because it’s the right thing to do. Hacker’s wife, Annie, often finds herself in the same predicament. Though often seen acting as Hacker’s in-house critic and at times mocker, Annie is also seen to have genuine respect for Hacker’s honesty. Unsurprisingly, she gets along much better with Bernard than she does with Humphrey. 

Not all the stories pit Hacker against Humphrey. Apparently, one of the notions Humphrey believes most ardently in is the idea that he and Hacker should be united in any fight against someone outside the department, for the department’s own good, whatever their internal squabbles might be. It is equally delightful watching Hacker and Humphrey team up. The people outside the department in this context can mean anyone from other departments to the United States, France and Arab countries, no less. The books have portrayed the United States as the classic big brother that it is, covering up for Britain at times and reprimanding her at others. France, on the other hand, is the obnoxious neighbour you usually seek to avoid at parties. The details of Britain’s particularly oily relationship with Arab countries are a treat in themselves too.

Making Hacker the Minister for Administrative Affairs is as indicative of the writers’ genius as anything. Had Hacker headed any other department, like the Defence Ministry or the Treasury, that would have underlined his whole work with a specific basis, like the military or the financial in the instances above. Administration, however, is all-encompassing, and its functions are closely linked to all other departments. This means that you learn about administration while simultaneously learning about all the other departments it comes in contact with. The other reason is that the chief task of Administration is to ensure that the Civil Service runs smoothly, so Hacker finds himself right in the centre of the turf war between government and the Civil Service, making his policy decisions, and the necessity to block them, all the more crucial from Humphrey’s perspective.

‘Yes Prime Minister’ is the direct sequel, which opens with Humphrey getting promoted to Cabinet Secretary, the highest post in the Civil Service. The incumbent Prime Minister then resigns, paving the way for Humphrey to help Hacker get the job. Hacker, for his part, then promotes Bernard to his private secretary, making it Three’s Company all over again. Though necessary as all this was for the plot to advance, the writers have taken great care to make it seem the natural turn of events.

A contradiction that instantly leaps out is about the names of the books themselves, ‘Yes Minister’ and ‘Yes Prime Minister’, which are also the concluding sentences of most of the stories. It is usually Humphey or Bernard who say it, and the irony is that it shows them agreeing with Hacker when in reality they have manipulated him into accepting something they want happened. When the shoe’s on the other foot, though, the same phrase is used to admit defeat and accept Hacker’s victory.

This captivating tale is told in equally captivating and rich language. We get the chance to appreciate the immense beauty of the English language, which parades its Victorian roots with a nice touch of contemporary. The flowery and the esoteric is usually kept out given that the book is basically a diary, and Hacker’s style can best be described as street meat while Humphrey’s is all caviar and foie gras. Verbosity is Humphrey’s greatest weapon in his mission to be incomprehensible to Hacker. You often find Hacker requesting a short one-line answer after reeling from Humphrey’s rich complex sentences which sometimes occupy entire pages. Making sense of those monster sentences with all their descriptions, obscure epithets and ‘stalling phraseology’ is a rewarding exercise in its own right. I had once been smitten with such sentences and developed the habit of making them myself on group chats, much to the annoyance of my companions. This is best expressed in the Editor’s Note where they say that ‘prolonged exposure to the Civil Service had taught Hacker that language is not a window into the mind but a curtain drawn across it’. 

Thus with a delicious use of language, intricate plots, well-rounded characters, an outrageous amount of homework, and most of all the most refreshing humour you can find, these books check all the boxes. I had been told that they would make me roll around in laughter, and now it is up to historians to deduce exactly how I laughed, for I was always in too elevated a state of mind to notice. One thing that possibly makes this so enjoyable to us Indians is that it is a scathing, harsh mockery of the government that ruled our country for a century and a half. They allow us to feel a bit sorry for them, a nice change from the agelong bitterness with which we’ve regarded them. As quite vocal critics of our own government, we are heartened to find that things are not all that different on the other side. We have to respect the British sense of humour, though, as I find it most unlikely that such a work could ever be so popular here. Furthermore, these books slowly nudge us into a state of acceptance; acceptance of all the rat race, begging for popularity, many more failures than successes and regarding the news media as a nemesis and many such aspects of government everywhere. Hacker himself puts this quite beautifully on one occasion, when he tries to convey some startling information to the PM against Humphrey’s advice. He is, however, prevented from doing so by party superiors, and his promise to the source of the information that it will be brought to light leaves him in a dilemma, from which Humphrey ultimately rescues him. Exhausted and overwrought by the ordeal, Hacker writes:

“In government, you must always try to do what is right. But you must never let anyone catch you trying to do it. Because doing right is wrong, right?”

Yes, Minister.

From left to right, Sir Humphrey (Nigel Hawthorne), Jim Hacker (Paul Eddington) and Bernard (Derek Fowlds) in the popular BBC Television Series based on the same