Yes, Prime Minister - The Key

As someone who has spent all of their professional life in a political environment The Key, the fourth episode of the first series of Yes Prime Minister, represents an excellent introduction to understanding the competing tensions when governing in the United Kingdom.

For those unfamiliar with the series, the three main protagonists are Jim Hacker the Prime Minister, his Principal Private Secretary Bernard Woolley and the Cabinet Secretary Sir Humphrey Appleby.

The three characters are pivotal in ensuring that Britain is governed, yet each have different objectives and it is these differences that are most starkly drawn out in The Key.

Furthermore, The Key sees the introduction of a new character Dorothy Wainwright, the Prime Minister's political adviser. Dorothy has her own agenda which she seeks to protect and is just as important a player as Hacker, Sir Humphrey and Bernard.

The plot to The Key is basically a turf war between the civil servants and politicians over not one but two keys to power.

The first key is the theoretical key of the office occupied by Dorothy which enables her to observe the activities of political colleagues and civil servants alike. Sir Humphrey desperately wants to reclaim this room for the civil service in order to weaken Dorothy's grip on the Prime Minister.

The second key is that of the actual key to access the Prime Minister's Private Office. Sir Humphrey consistently ignores the fact his position does not necessitate that he has access to this office, and so Hacker, on the advice of Dorothy, decides to enforce procedures to stop Sir Humphrey entering the office at will.

The corner of the civil service in this turf war is fought principally by Sir Humphrey yet it is not the elected politician Hacker who is fighting the politician's corner most vehemently but the party political appointee Dorothy Wainwright.

Effectively Hacker and Woolley are caught between the two. Whereas for Sir Humphrey and Dorothy the fight is about preserving their respective positions, both Hacker and Bernard are unfulfilled in their objectives and both realise they need political and civil service support in order to achieve their aims.

Hacker is a new Prime Minister looking to implement his "grand design" yet is up against resistance from the civil service. Bernard is a high flying career civil servant who is aiming for the top yet is caught between the short term need to please his immediate master the Prime Minister as well as the more long term objective of satisfying his civil service superiors who will ultimately determine Bernard's career trajectory.

Despite being in conflict, Dorothy and Sir Humphrey are effectively two sides of the same coin. Both have reached the summit of their ambitions and therefore seek to preserve both the purity and influence of the institutions they represent, as well as their own personal position.

The episode ends very much as it begins with nothing much changing, Dorothy retains her room and Sir Humphrey gets his key back. Both positions are preserved.

However, due to Jim Hacker and Bernard's use of the political and bureaucratic skills at their disposal the events of the episode underline that power ultimately resides with the Prime Minister and his Principal Private Secretary when managing the competing tensions between politicians and civil servants.

It is these competing tensions that are fundamentally the backbone of governing in the United Kingdom.