Brexit is a mess - what would Yes Minister's Sir Humphrey ((a fictional character)) do?

Brexit is a mess – what would Yes Minister’s Sir Humphrey do?

Jonathan Lynn

I emailed my old friend and asked what he would do if he were still head of the civil service. Here is his reply

Tue 22 Jan 2019 06.00 GMT Last modified on Tue 22 Jan 2019 10.08 GMT

“What is the function of the civil service? To help the government implement its policies. But with Brexit – the most important constitutional issue for decades – every cabinet minister has his or her own policy. Without a written constitution and with only norms, traditions and precedents to guide us, this unprecedented situation has made everyone in government into a headless chicken.

“I was merely a humble vessel into which ministers, the people’s representatives, poured their thoughts and hopes. My job was to help turn this jumble into workable policies – no mean task. We were loyal to each government and each prime minister in turn, supporting their manifestos, their hopes and their dreams where practicable, whatever our private opinions.

But since Mr Cameron allowed his cabinet to campaign on both sides of that disastrous referendum, cabinet government has been defenestrated. There is no longer any collective policy. It is every man for himself, as we saw with Michael Gove, who said he was behind his fellow Brexiteer Boris Johnson and then stabbed him in the back. I have always been careful of people who say they are behind me because that’s where you need to be if you are going to stab them in the back. But none of them dare deliver the coup de grace to Mrs May because that may result in a general election.
(snip)

“We are told that parliament will try to take control. I’m not sure how that will help. On the BBC on Saturday morning I heard two parliamentarians (Lord Somebody and Lady Somebody Else) admitting that they couldn’t see a way through the various entrenched positions. We must avoid ‘no deal’, and the only option at this late stage is to achieve a dramatic shift in public opinion. This might be done by exploiting our traditional competitive attitude to the French.

“So I would discreetly phone Michel Barnier. He is French, and the Tories resent that we have never got our way with the French since the Battle of Waterloo. The chief of the defence staff once told me that we don’t have an independent nuclear deterrent because of the Russians – we have it because the French have one.

“I would ask Barnier to do two things:

1. Make it clear that the UK’s departure from the EU would also involve our being excluded from the Uefa League and Cup;

2. Clarify that we would also be excluded from the Eurovision song contest.

“These exclusions would greatly enhance the prospects of the French winning both in future.

“Then I would telephone President Macron and ask him to make a speech saying that De Gaulle had been right all along: the British are not to be trusted and should not have been admitted to Europe; that the French have been planning for years for us to depart and are delighted that they and the Germans will now be free to run things the way they want.

“With luck, this would so provoke the people that they would rise en masse and demand another referendum to stop the French from once more getting the better of us.”
(snip)