THANK YOU! I was trying to remember where my brain dug this up from and I couldn’t pinpoint it.

• Bernard Woolley : What if the Prime Minister insists we help them?
• Sir Humphrey Appleby : Then we follow the four-stage strategy.
• Bernard Woolley : What’s that?
• Sir Richard Wharton : Standard Foreign Office response in a time of crisis.
• Sir Richard Wharton : In stage one we say nothing is going to happen.
• Sir Humphrey Appleby : Stage two, we say something may be about to happen, but we should do nothing about it.
• Sir Richard Wharton : In stage three, we say that maybe we should do something about it, but there’s nothing we can do.
• Sir Humphrey Appleby : Stage four, we say maybe there was something we could have done, but it’s too late now.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0751831/characters/nm0001329