The Complete Yes Minister полностью

Still, he has got me out of a frightful hole. And it was quite clear what the quid pro quo was expected to be. I had to suggest that we lay off the local authorities.

‘It must be admitted,’ I was forced to concede, ‘that local councillors — on the whole — are sensible, responsible people, and they’re democratically elected. Central government has to be very careful before it starts telling them how to do their job.’

‘And the failure standards?’

‘I think they can manage without them, don’t you think?’

‘Yes Minister.’

And he smiled contentedly.

But I don’t intend to let the matter drop for good. I shall return to it, after a decent interval. After all, we had a little unspoken agreement, an unwritten détente — but no one can hold you to an unspoken, unwritten deal, can they?

May 14th

I am writing this entry, not in my London flat or in my constituency house, but in the first-class compartment of a British Airways flight to the oil sheikhdom of Qumran.

We have been en route to the Persian gulf for about four and a half hours, and we should be landing in about forty-five minutes.

I’m very excited. I’ve never flown first-class before, and it’s quite different. They give you free champagne all the way and a decent meal instead of the usual monosodium glutamate plus colouring.

Also, it’s nice being a VIP — special lounge, on the plane last, general red-carpet treatment.

We’re going there to ratify the contract for one of the biggest export orders Britain has ever obtained in the Middle East.

But when I say ‘we’ I don’t just mean me and Bernard and Humphrey. In fact, I asked for an assurance in advance that we couldn’t be accused of wasting a lot of government money on the trip. Humphrey assured me that we were taking the smallest possible delegation. ‘Pared to the bone’ was the phrase he used, I distinctly remember. But now I realise that there may have been some ulterior motive in keeping me in the VIP lounge till the last possible minute.

When I actually got onto the plane I was aghast. It is entirely full of civil servants. In fact it transpires that the plane had to be specially chartered because there are so many of us going.

I immediately challenged Humphrey about the extravagance of chartering an aircraft. He looked at me as though I were mad, and said that it would be infinitely more expensive for all of us to go on a scheduled flight.

I’m perfectly sure that’s true. My argument is with the size of the party. ‘Who are all these people?’ I asked.

‘Our little delegation.’

‘But you just said the delegation has been pared to the bone.’

He insisted that it was. I asked him, again, to tell me who they all are. And he told me. There’s a small delegation from the FCO because, although it’s a DAA mission, the FCO doesn’t like any of us to go abroad except under their supervision. I can’t really understand that, foreign policy is not at issue on this trip, all we are doing is ratifying a contract that has already been fully negotiated between the Government of Qumran and British Electronic Systems Ltd.

Anyway, apart from the FCO delegation, there is one from the Department of Trade, and one from Industry. Also a small group from Energy, because we’re going to an oil sheikhdom. (If you ask me, that’s completely irrelevant — I reckon the Department of Energy would still demand the right to send a delegation if we were going to Switzerland — they’d probably argue that chocolate gives you energy!) Then there’s a Dep. Sec. leading a team from the Cabinet Office, a group from the COI.[44] And finally, the whole of the DAA mission: my press office, half my private office, liaison with other departments, secretaries, those from the legal department who did the contract, those who supervised the contract… the list is endless.

One thing’s certain: it’s certainly not been pared to the bone. I reminded Humphrey (who is sitting next to me but has nodded off after going at the free champagne like a pig with his snout in the trough) that when we were going to meet the Qumranis in Middlesbrough there were only going to be seven people coming with us.

‘Yes Minister,’ he had nodded understandingly. ‘But Teesside is perhaps not quite so diplomatically significant as Qumran.’

‘Teesside returns four MPs,’ I remarked.

‘Qumran controls Shell and BP.’

Then, suddenly, a most interesting question occurred to me.

‘Why are you here?’ I asked.

‘Purely my sense of duty free,’ is what I thought he had replied. I interrupted gleefully. ‘Duty free?’

He held up his hand, asking to be allowed to finish what he was saying. ‘Duty, free from any personal considerations.’

Then, changing the subject suspiciously quickly, he handed me a document headed Final Communiqué, and asked me to approve it.