A few years ago, everyone in Westminster was obsessed by The West Wing, but a decade of chaos and populism has rendered Aaron Sorkin’s vision of idealists devoted to the public good obsolete. The madness of the last government left even The Thick of It a tame parody of reality. But listening to everyone from Dominic Cummings to Morgan McSweeney bemoan the state of the civil service shows that Yes Minister/Prime Minister, with their portrayal of hapless ministers in the spell of apex mandarin Sir Humphrey Appleby, may be (somewhat surprisingly) the most enduring of television’s political classics.
Sir Humphrey and his victim, Jim Hacker, were the creation of writing duo Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn. Hacker and Humphrey returned in a successful stage revival in 2010, but a lot has happened since then. Jaydied in 2016, but Lynn has penned one last hurrah for his heroes – I’m Sorry, Prime Minister – which runs until 9 May at the Apollo Theatre in London. Griff Rhys Jones is playing Hacker, while Sir Humphrey is Clive Francis, who was the gloriously oily foreign office official, Luke, in the TV series.
Sir Humphrey must get to grips with the certainties of ideologically blinkered youth
Both sparring partners are now in their eighties and nearing the end. Hacker is the master of Hacker College, Oxford, but has got himself into hot water with some -questionable comments. Humphrey returns to defend the former prime minister, setting up a delicious encounter between old world oratory and woke world ideology – as well as some timely reflections on what remains constant and what has changed in our -politics.
‘It’s about these two old men who are completely bewildered by the world as it is now, Jim more than Humphrey,’ says Lynn. ‘How they are struggling to come to terms with old age and loss – loss of power, loss of friends, loss of family. It’s the same theme as King Lear. But funnier.’ Lynn is 82 and admits there is an element of autobiography. ‘I’m bewildered by everything that goes on politically at the moment.’
The play wrestles with the reality that much political debate is no longer about power but social and cultural views – critical race theory, trans rights and social media virtue-signalling (on left and right) which passes for public debate these days. Hacker is, in effect, being cancelled. ‘He’s worried because he made a politically incorrect remark, actually a few of them, and the college wants him out,’ Lynn explains. ‘He can’t see anything wrong with anything he said and puts up a vigorous defence. He calls Humphrey out of desperation because he can’t think of anybody else who might be able to help him.’
Appleby, who remains ‘Sir’ Humphrey, having declined a peerage, is retired and has lost most of his money in an inheritance tax scheme. ‘He has troubles with his family, to whom he has not paid nearly enough attention throughout his big career.’ He needs work, but Lynn explains: ‘He doesn’t really want to see Jim. They were never friends. They had an acrimonious relationship which was covered by a veneer of courtesy.’
Nonetheless, the play will feature his trademark flights of verbal fancy as Humphrey gets to grips with the certainties of ideologically blinkered youth. ‘Humphrey has ways of dealing with people,’ says Lynn. ‘But real conflict in the play is between Jim and Humphrey over what to do, their years of disagreement about nearly everything and being forced to work together.’
Lynn is interested in the fickle fate of politics, where men who are masters of the universe one moment are gone the next. ‘What do you do if you’re prime minister and your every word and every thought is seized upon, and suddenly overnight you lose an election or you lose the support of your backbenchers and the next day the moving truck arrives and you’re out? I think for someone who’s been the centre of power it’s a huge loss.’
The original series was not just one of the funniest sitcoms of the 1980s but the programme which explained how government really works, laying bare the power of the civil service. Lynn and Jay’s original inspiration was Richard Crossman’s diaries.
Lynn recalls: ‘On the opening page, when Crossman arrived in his office [as housing minister] for the first time [in 1964], he looks at the enormous pile of letters and documents in his in-tray and says how hard it’s going to be to get through all this. And his private secretary says: “You don’t have to worry about that, minister. You just transfer all the letters from this tray to this tray and we’ll deal with it.” And it’s on that first page.’ Crossman recorded the ‘deferential’ tone of officials with ‘Yes, minister, no, minister, if you wish it, minister’ – thus did they have their title.
Margaret Thatcher loved the show. ‘Politicians liked it because it gave them an alibi,’ Lynn says. ‘When people said “Why haven’t you done this?” they would be able to say, “Because I’ve got Humphreys in my office.” The civil service liked the show, because they thought it revealed that they were the people who run the country. Until then, civil servants had always been portrayed on television as not very bright people in bowler hats.’
Thirty years on, the civil service is regarded not so much as a Rolls-Royce but as a clapped-out car that won’t change direction even when steered. In the new play, even Sir Humphrey is downcast. ‘Everything worked really efficiently when he was in charge of it but he’s very disappointed with the civil service,’ says Lynn. ‘It really is a mess and the government is a mess.’
This is the first time he has written alone. ‘We wrote all of [the original series] together, in the same room, passing pages back and forth.’ Jay was a conservative and Lynn a leftie, but they prided themselves on never making clear where Hacker stood. ‘Tony and I disagreed about almost everything politically and were very good friends for many years. Never a cross word. We accepted each other’s different views and we gave each other implicitly a veto. I think that was a great strength of the show, but it’s also how things were better then.’
He is interested in the fickle fate of politics, where men are masters of the universe one moment, gone the next
Lynn is struck by how much more unpleasant politics is now. ‘I think it’s changed. There’s an awful lot more bile. Venom. Anger. It used to be pretty common for politicians on opposite sides of the House to be friends as well as political opponents. Now I think it’s pretty rare. Social media has made it acceptable to express all kinds of hatred in public. And of course, Donald Trump is not setting the best example.’
Lynn is speaking from his home in New York state. He has lived in the US since 1987, including a spell making films in Los Angeles, before moving to the same home as his son and grandchildren on the East Coast. While he deplores Trump (‘He sees himself as a sort of Putin’), Lynn understands the basis of the US President’s support.
‘I think he’s a product of the way society has been going. Most Americans are very poor. About 60 per cent of Americans live pay cheque to pay cheque. They’re not very impressed with most political behaviour in America. The government shut down for 40 days recently. Congressmen were all paid. Everyone who worked for the Congress was not. There’s tremendous discontent. And in my view it’s completely understandable. There’s similar discontent in Britain.’
While America is in the grip of a powerful President who governs by urge, Britain seems to have been run, of late, by leaders with little plan or conviction – perhaps even less than the often hapless Hacker. Lynn blames officials as well as politicians. ‘Humphrey knew how to manage Jim and could essentially govern the country himself. Now they don’t have the weight of experience they would have had in Humphrey’s day. But they still have some control.’
He thinks ministers are still essentially transient. ‘Cabinet minister is a part-time job. You can’t be head of a vast corporation like a department of state and spend two-thirds of your time away from it in the House of Commons or political work in your constituency. A cabinet minister who was really efficient and good, like Denis Healey at defence, or Roy Jenkins as chancellor, could get their way on about 10 per cent of what they wanted. People without that sort of energy and drive get very little done. Before they’ve had time to even understand the department, they’ve been reshuffled to another job.’
Lynn says Hacker’s essential evolution from idealist to cynic reminds him of Keir Starmer. ‘I think Jim got into politics for the reason that most politicians do, which is not only personal ambition, but also a genuine desire to do something good. What happens is that you have to make so many compromises on your way up that by the time you get to a position of real power, you’ve swallowed so many things you don’t believe in that you don’t really know what you do believe any more. I think that’s what we’re seeing with Starmer at the moment.’ However, he adds: ‘I think that may be better than somebody like Liz Truss who couldn’t compromise on anything.’
‘The civil service liked the show, because they thought it revealed they were the people who run the country’
It is tempting to regard this as a uniquely difficult moment or important crossroads in politics, but Lynn has seen it all before. ‘I think the stakes have always been huge. All the subjects we wrote about were always big and important. So I don’t think that’s changed.’
Indeed, the issues facing Starmer would have been very familiar to Prime Minister Hacker. ‘Before we wrote Yes, Prime Minister, I went to the Daily Telegraph offices. There wasn’t the internet in those days, and I looked up 30 years before, the same week in August. “How are we going to get peace in the Middle East? Is there going to be another war in the Middle East? Why is productivity not high enough? Why is unemployment not shifting much? What’s causing inflation? Why have we got no national transport policy?” And so on. They were all the same stories. The only thing that was different were the names and the numbers.’
If this all seems a little depressing, Lynn assures me the last hurrah of Hacker and Humphrey is anything but. ‘I don’t want to send the audience out depressed and miserable, because I think that’s how they arrive,’ he says. ‘Anyone remotely interested in government can’t be happy with the way things are in the world or in Britain. And so, no, I don’t see it as my duty to make them feel worse.’
I’m Sorry, Prime Minister is at the Apollo Theatre, London, until 9 May.
Comments