- James Hacker: [Last lines]
- [Drunk]
- James Hacker: I'll tell you about government. You must always do the right thing. But, you must never let anybody catch you trying to do it. Because doing right's wrong, right?
- Annie Hacker: Haven't you had enough, darling?
- James Hacker: Still some left in the bottle. No, the thing about government is principle, and the principle is you mustn't rock the boat, because if you do, all the little consciences will fall out. And you must all hang together. Because if you don't hang together, you'll be hanged separately. I'm hanged if I'll be hanged! You know, politics is about helping others. Even if that means helping terrorists. Terrorists are others, aren't they? Not us, are they? No. And you must always follow your conscience, but you must always know where you're going. So you can't follow your conscience. Cause it may not be going the same way you are.
- [Picking up the whiskey bottle]
- James Hacker: Empty... like me. I'm a moral vacuum.
- Annie Hacker: Oh, cheer up, darling. Nothing good comes out of Whitehall. You did what you could.
- James Hacker: You don't really mean that.
- Annie Hacker: I do.
- James Hacker: No, I'm just like Humphrey and all the rest of them.
- Annie Hacker: Now that's certainly not true.
- James Hacker: No?
- Annie Hacker: He's lost his sense of right and wrong. You've still got yours.
- James Hacker: [Depressed] Have I?
- Annie Hacker: It's just that you don't use it much. You're a sort of whiskey priest. You do at least know when you've done the wrong thing.
- James Hacker: Whiskey priest?
- Annie Hacker: That's right.
- James Hacker: Good. Let's open another bottle.
- Annie Hacker: We haven't got one.
- James Hacker: That's what you think.
- [He opens one of the red boxes beside him and pulls out a full bottle of whiskey, much to Annie's bemusement]
- James Hacker: Who said nothing good ever came out of Whitehall? You want one?
- Annie Hacker: Yes, Minister.
- Sir Humphrey Appleby: What's the matter, Bernard?
- Bernard Woolley: Oh nothing really, Sir Humphrey.
- Sir Humphrey Appleby: You look unhappy.
- Bernard Woolley: Well, I was just wondering if the minister was right, actually.
- Sir Humphrey Appleby: Very unlikely. What about?
- Bernard Woolley: About ends and means. I mean, will I end up as a moral vacuum too?
- Sir Humphrey Appleby: Oh, I hope so, Bernard. If you work hard enough.
- Bernard Woolley: I actually feel rather downcast. If it's our job to carry out government policies, shouldn't we believe in them?
- Sir Humphrey Appleby: Huh, what an extraordinary idea.
- Bernard Woolley: Why?
- Sir Humphrey Appleby: Bernard, I have served eleven governments in the past thirty years. If I had believed in all their policies, I would have been passionately committed to keeping out of the Common Market, and passionately committed to going into it. I would have been utterly convinced of the rightness of nationalising steel. And of denationalising it and renationalising it. On capital punishment, I'd have been a fervent retentionist and an ardent abolishionist. I would've been a Keynesian and a Friedmanite, a grammar school preserver and destroyer, a nationalisation freak and a privatisation maniac; but above all, I would have been a stark, staring, raving schizophrenic.
- Bernard Woolley: So what do we believe in?
- Sir Humphrey Appleby: At this moment, Bernard, we believe in stopping the minister from informing the Prime Minister.
- Bernard Woolley: But why?
- Sir Humphrey Appleby: Because once the Prime Minister knows, there will have to be an enquiry, like Watergate. The investigation of a trivial break-in led to one ghastly revelation after another and finally the downfall of a president. The golden rule is don't lift lids off cans of worms. Everything is connected to everything else. Who said that?
- Bernard Woolley: The Cabinet Secretary?
- Sir Humphrey Appleby: Nearly right. Actually, it was Lenin.
- Bernard Woolley: How do you stop a Cabinet Minister talking to a Prime Minister?
- Sir Humphrey Appleby: Interesting question. You tell me.
- Bernard Woolley: I don't know.
- Sir Humphrey Appleby: Work it out. You're supposed to be a high flier. Or are you really a low-flier supported by occasional gusts of wind?
- Bernard Woolley: Well, YOU can't stop the minister seeing the PM, can you?
- Sir Humphrey Appleby: I can't.
- Bernard Woolley: Nor can the private office at No.10.
- Sir Humphrey Appleby: Correct.
- Bernard Woolley: It has to be someone high up in government.
- Bernard Woolley: Someone close to the PM. Someone who can frighten the minister... The Chief Whip?
- Sir Humphrey Appleby: Excellent, you've learnt a lot. So, how do you crack the whip?
- Bernard Woolley: I'm sorry?
- Sir Humphrey Appleby: How do you mobilise the Chief Whip?
- Bernard Woolley: The minister's asked me to phone the PM's private office for an appointment, so if you had a word with the Cabinet Secretary, and he had a word with the diary secretary, and they all had a word with the Whip's office, then when the minister arrived, the Whip could meet him and say the PM is busy and asked him to have a word with the minister instead.
- Sir Humphrey Appleby: Excellent, Bernard. You should have taken a degree in engineering!
- [Bernard picks up the phone]
- Sir Humphrey Appleby: What are you doing?
- Bernard Woolley: I thought you wanted the Cabinet Secretary.
- Sir Humphrey Appleby: I do, indeed. Now, do you, as the minister's private secretary, feel obliged to tell the minister of this conversation?
- Bernard Woolley: What conversation?
- Sir Humphrey Appleby: Well done, Bernard. You'll be a moral vacuum yet!
- James Hacker: A confidential source has disclosed to me that British arms are being sold to Italian terrorists.
- Sir Humphrey Appleby: I see. May I ask who this confidential source was?
- James Hacker: Humphrey, I said it was confidential.
- Sir Humphrey Appleby: Sorry. I naturally assumed that meant you were going to tell me.
- Sir Humphrey Appleby: It's not my job to care. That's what politicians are for. My job is to carry out policy.
- James Hacker: Even if you think it's wrong?
- Sir Humphrey Appleby: Almost all government policy is wrong... but frightfully well carried out!
- James Hacker: Have you ever known a civil servant resign on a matter of principle?
- Sir Humphrey Appleby: I should think not! What an appalling suggestion!