Political suicide by integration
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AN INTEGRATED transport policy, as seen by the writers of that inspired television series, Yes Minister, is political suicide for the minister who sponsors it. Those who were born before yesterday will remember that it also did less than nothing for the government that enacted it.
In the television episode the idea was the result of a sudden rush of blood to the Prime Minister's head. Its defeat by the mandarins of Whitehall, who were wedded to a policy of no policy for transport, made a hilarious half-hour's viewing.
Its replacement by a devious plan for a great national transport authority that was bound to fail was likewise' torpedoed by sly exponents of an unruffled routine of paperchasing. It will be fun to obsen, the fate of any similar plan that the next Labour government may attempt to introduce.
Meanwhile, the impending 'resignation of the Prime I Minister's unpaid adviser on Civil Service efficiency, Sir Den Rayner, vice-chairman of Mark: and Spencer (mirrored in Yes Minister by Sir Mark Spencer), has been attributed to the combined resistance of the highesfechelons of the service to proposed reforms. The similarities between life and thr television programme are uncanny.