Jim is forced to back down about exposing bribery used to obtain a lucrative foreign contract when Bernard allows a valuable vase from a foreign government to be undervalued so that Mrs Hacker can keep it.

Jim uses a costly mistake from Sir Humphrey’s past to escape chastising an efficient local council for being late with their paperwork.

Jim and Sir Humphrey pass the buck to protect each other when they appear before a select committee investigating charges of waste in Hacker’s ministry, until Jim’s higher loyalties are called upon.

When the Government is planning to introduce a national database, Jim wants to bring in safe guards, but Sir Humphrey stalls until with some help from the opposition, Jim gets his way.

Jim accepts an unpopular position pushing a transportation bill desired by Number 10, but opposed by everyone else.

Jim Hacker retains his seat in the election and is given a cabinet post in the new government He meets the permanent secretary for his department Sir Humphrey Appleby but Jim decides to change the way things are done in the civil service so Sir Humphrey sets out to stop him

When Jim learns that when in opposition he was bugged by the secret service, he decides to bring in legislation to kerb the bugging, only to find out that he is on the death list of a group of terrorists, and the best way to find them, is by bugging phone lines.

Jim Hacker is determined to reduce the Civil Service, but he is frustrated by Sir Humphrey, and the only numbers he can alter are the numbers of tea ladies.

Jim has the chance of creating jobs, and saving a chemical company, when they are offered the chance to manufacture a highly dangerous chemical, but when the news gets out that it might be too dangerous, he has to back down.

Sir Humphrey uses Jim’s promise to keep a popular city farm project open to get special permission for an additional nine floors on a proposed skyscraper.

Jim faces opposition from all sides when he learns that British munitions have been sold to terrorist groups and he decides to start an inquiry into how it happened.

When Jim learns that a brand new hospital still has no medical staff, but hundreds of civil servants working there, he proposes that half of the civil servants be sacked and use the money saved to open wards with medical staff.