Boris Johnson allegedly ‘deeply upset’ the Palace with a sly action he asked the late Queen to make while he was PM – and it’s now been reported he never apologised to the monarch
Boris Johnson was a controversial Prime Minister to the public – but it appears the ex-leader also ruffled some feathers in the Palace.
The Tory came into power in 2019 on the promise he would see Brexit through, whether there was a deal or not. The Prime Minister at one point shut Parliament down to give himself more time and to stop MPs passing a law to ensure a no deal option was off the table. Johnson’s prorogation of Parliament was later deemed “unlawful, void and of no effect” by the Supreme Court but a new account claims the Palace was also left “deeply upset” by the Tory’s moves at the times.
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Prorogation – the period between a session of parliament and the state opening – is normal but usually lasts for around a week. Johnson and his clan at the time were desperate to stop a law blocking a no-deal Brexit as he wanted to use it as a threat in Brussels.
Johnson needed approval from the late Queen to do this so quickly sent up Jacob Rees-Mogg, his lord president of the privy council, and two other privy counsellors to Balmoral. The then Prime Minister had supposedly warned the Palace in advance of their plans but the timing allegedly caused an issue for the Royals, according to The Times.
This all happened during the Queen’s summer holidays in Scotland and while she and her team were away from their usual offices in London and apart. According to historian Sir Anthony Seldon: “They hadn’t been properly prepared and warned when on holiday in August, and the Palace felt they would have been in a stronger position had they been contacted earlier and had a chance to think it through.”
Despite this, the Queen gave her approval for the plan to Johnson over the phone before Mogg and his entourage travelled up North. The late Queen was said to have hated having her summer break interrupted but Mogg claimed the Monarch was “friendly”.
The ex-MP said: “We’d been warned that it might be frosty. But the Queen couldn’t have been more friendly. She was saying, ‘I’m sorry you’ve had to come such a long way’.”
Despite this, Palace sources allegedly said the late Queen felt she was put into an awkward situation. At the time, the attorney-general had told Johnson the move to prorogue Parliament for longer was lawful.
Historian Peter Hennessy shared his theory about his so-called “good chaps” theory of government, which is “that you do nothing to embarrass the monarch”. Hennessy said the prorogation “was bound to embarrass the Queen because it was going to split the parties and the nation and everybody. The Palace was deeply upset by this”.
Despite all of this, pro-EU MPs ended up bringing in legislation to stop Johnson pursuing a no-deal Brexit. Among the Tory mess of Brexit, Johnson also faced serious calls to say sorry to the Queen.
Ex-Prime Minister Sir John Major urged Johnson to make an “unreserved apology”, adding: “No prime minister must ever treat the monarch or parliament in this way again.” The late Queen reportedly viewed Johnson as a comic figure and allegedly said he was “perhaps better suited to the stage”.
Rumours about whether Johnson did or didn’t apologise to the late Queen behind closed doors have swirled, but the ex-PM did not bring up an apology in his memoir. Johnson later said: “I cannot comment on the view of the late Queen but the idea of some sort of apology is total fiction.”