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Yes Minister on the EU and Brexit
I have long maintained that the greatest conservative propaganda ever made was created — ironically enough — by the BBC in the form of Yes Minister and its sequel series, Yes Prime Minister. TVTropes used to describe it as “three men in a room talking politics and the funniest show ever.” Those three men are James Hacker, the titular minister/prime minister trying to impose his policies; Sir Humphrey Appleby, the cynical senior Civil Service agent working to ensure that the Civil Service’s wishes are policy; and Bernard Woolley, the naïf Civil Service agent torn among the two and his own ideas of what democracy requires of him.
Yes, this show is thirty years old, but the political issues and intrigues rarely feel dated. Reading this morning’s headlines about Brexit, I was reminded of two of Sir Humphrey’s crash courses on reality. First (above), why do we have a European Union? Forget all the high-minded talk and consider how it’s really all about national interest.
Second, why was the United Kingdom in the EU to begin with? In pursuit of a disunited Europe, Britain’s foreign policy goal for the last 500 years:
Many shows claim to be timeless, but few truly are.
Published in Foreign Policy
I have both Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister on DVD. They are classics of comedy, as well as primers on how a bureaucracy functions – the back room deals, the quid pro quos, the political backstabbing . . .
My favorite is the Christmas special, Party Games. This is the episode where Minister Hacker becomes Prime Minister hacker – a classic within a classic!
“The Key” is my favorite Yes, Prime Minister episode while “Big Brother” is my favorite from Yes, Minister.
Unsurprisingly in both Hacker gets the upper hand, albeit briefly, over Sir Humphrey.
I don’t believe I had even heard of this show until Ricochet. They have full episodes on Youtube.
Genius.
I’d say that it’s more like the British finally deciding that if France and Germany want to take over the continent together, they’re welcome to it.
Yes, however one of the chief lessons of Yes, Minister is that the Civil Service nearly always finds a way to foil the politicians elected to do the will of the voters.
The voters have spoken. Cameron (a politician) says their verdict must be respected. Will the EU bureaucrats and UK Civil Service concur, or are they already plotting ways to keep the UK in the EU?
Indeed, up here in the Great White North it all started to fall apart when the people elected a civil servant to the top job.
From that point on, the amount of daylight between the Civil Service and the Liberal Party progressively diminished. Today, it’s non-existent.
Years ago I found a hardback copy of Yes, Minister in the airport in Hong Kong which contained all the episodes. At that time the book was not available here in the US – tho it’s available on Amazon these days. The book was written as a daily diary, tho in actuality it was the dialogue from the TV series. The book, as the authors explained, was taken from Bernard’s copious notes during his time as Hacker’s secretary. They also said in the Introduction that they interviewed him in the rest home where he was residing to gain a better insight into Hacker’s time in office. That interview became many explanatory notes throughout the book.
Reading it in the trip home caused some raised eyebrows of the people sitting close by; my laughter was as loud at times as it was when I had watched the series on TV.
My favorite episode was the one about the hospital that had been built by the National Health System but because of lack of funds, no patients were being admitted. It had, however, an administrative staff of 512, who, as Sir Humphrey explained, were seriously overworked. Hacker had been voted into office on the pledge to pare down the bureaucracy in general and the Health System in particular. But asking Sir H “to slim down the bureaucracy,” thought Hacker, “was like asking a drunk to blow up a distillery.”
A visit later by Hacker to the hospital found him with the Chief Administrator who told him the hospital was up for the Florence Nightingale Award – for the most hygienic hospital in the Region. This he could understand. But when he questioned the need for staff in the absence of patients, she admonished him by saying the essential work of the hospital had to go on. Running an organization of 512 people was a big job.
As comedy, it’s wonderful. But it is not history. The UK went into the Common Market because it thought it had something to do with the superb economic performance of the Continent during the 50s and 60s, while Britain itself was increasingly in the doldrums. Of course, France and Germany were growing strongly off a low base, especially Germany which had been destroyed in the war, and which had benefited by the wise free-market reforms of Konrad Adenauer, Chancellor of West Germany from 1949 to 1963.
Britain was seeking salvation. Of course, upon joining the Common Market in 1973, things continued to go down hill rapidly to bottom out in the ‘Winter of Discontent‘ of 1978/79. At which point a certain Prime Minister took charge and implemented wise free-market reforms, saving the nation.