The Complete Yes Minister полностью

Frank and I tried to explain to the officials that for me to introduce such a scheme would be political suicide. The British people do not want to carry compulsory identification papers. I’ll be accused of trying to bring in a police state, when I’m still not fully recovered from the fuss about the Data Base. ‘Is this what we fought two world wars for?’ I can hear the backbenchers cry.

‘But it’s nothing more than a sort of driving licence,’ said Humphrey.

‘It’s the last nail in my coffin,’ said I.

‘You might get away with calling it the Euroclub Express,’ said Bernard. I told him to shut up or get out.

Frank asked why we had to introduce it, not the FCO? A good question.

‘I understand,’ explained Humphrey, ‘that the PM did originally suggest that the FCO introduce the measure, but the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs suggested that it was a Home Office measure, and then the Home Office took the view that it is essentially an administrative matter. The PM agreed.’

Frank said, ‘They’re all playing pass the parcel.’

Can you blame them, when they can hear it ticking?

Humphrey then observed mournfully that the identity card bill would probably be the last action of our Department.

Frank and I, unlike the civil servants, were still puzzled that such a proposal as the Europass could even be seriously under consideration by the FCO. We can both see clearly that it is wonderful ammunition for the anti-Europeans. I asked Humphrey if the Foreign Office doesn’t realise how damaging this would be to the European ideal?

‘I’m sure they do, Minister,’ he said. ‘That’s why they support it.’

This was even more puzzling, since I’d always been under the impression that the FO is pro-Europe. ‘Is it or isn’t it?’ I asked Humphrey.

‘Yes and no,’ he replied of course, ‘if you’ll pardon the expression. The Foreign Office is pro-Europe because it is really anti-Europe. In fact the Civil Service was united in its desire to make sure the Common Market didn’t work. That’s why we went into it.’

This sounded like a riddle to me. I asked him to explain further. And basically, his argument was as follows: Britain has had the same foreign policy objective for at least the last five hundred years – to create a disunited Europe. In that cause we have fought with the Dutch against the Spanish, with the Germans against the French, with the French and Italians against the Germans, and with the French against the Italians and Germans. [The Dutch rebellion against Philip II of Spain, the Napoleonic Wars, the First World War, and the Second World War – Ed.]

In other words, divide and rule. And the Foreign Office can see no reason to change when it has worked so well until now.

I was aware of all this, naturally, but I regarded it as ancient history. Humphrey thinks that it is, in fact, current policy. It was necessary for us to break up the EEC, he explained, so we had to get inside. We had previously tried to break it up from the outside, but that didn’t work. [A reference to our futile and short-lived involvement in EFTA, the European Free Trade Association, founded in 1960 and which the UK left in 1972 – Ed.] Now that we’re in, we are able to make a complete pig’s breakfast out of it. We have now set the Germans against the French, the French against the Italians, the Italians against the Dutch . . . and the Foreign Office is terribly happy. It’s just like old times.

I was staggered by all of this. I thought that all of us who are publicly pro-Europe believed in the European ideal. I said this to Sir Humphrey, and he simply chuckled.

So I asked him: if we don’t believe in the European ideal, why are we pushing to increase the membership?

‘Same reason,’ came the reply. ‘It’s just like the United Nations. The more members it has, the more arguments you can stir up, and the more futile and impotent it becomes.’

This all strikes me as the most appalling cynicism, and I said so.

Sir Humphrey agreed complacently. ‘Yes Minister. We call it diplomacy. It’s what made Britain great, you know.’

Frank, like the terrier that he is, wanted to continue worrying away at the problem of the Europass. ‘How will the other EEC countries feel about having to carry identity papers? Won’t they resist too?’

Sir Humphrey felt not. ‘The Germans will love it, the French will ignore it, and the Italians and Irish will be too chaotic to enforce it. Only the British will resent it.’ He’s right, of course.

I must say that, to me, it’s all beginning to look suspiciously like a plot to get rid of me. Frank doesn’t subscribe to a conspiracy theory on this occasion, on the grounds that I’m to be got rid of anyway as my department is to be abolished.