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JUST THE TWO OF US
The Queen’s private audiences with her PMS inspired The Crown – now a revelatory new series spills their secrets
During the nation’s most tumultuous times, including the Suez crisis, the miners’ strike, Brexit and the pandemic, there has been one steadfast presence – the Queen. And helping to steer a steady course through it all are Her Majesty’s weekly meetings with her prime ministers.
She has had 14 PMS, and their get-togethers at Buckingham Palace have been at the heart of our constitutional monarchy. They inspired the hit series The Crown (its creator Peter Morgan wrote a play called The Audience about them before his epic series), and now The Queen And Her PMS, a new documentary for Channel 5, gives us more insight.
‘What is said at the audience is kept private. It is a place where PMS can talk about legislation in a way they can’t talk with colleagues or rivals,’ says Charles Anson, who was both the Queen’s press secretary and has worked behind the scenes at Downing Street.
The meetings, which can last for up to 90 minutes, take place in the audience room at the palace. If the Queen is away the two will talk on the phone instead.
The documentary, which features the Mail’s editor-at-large Richard Kay and several historians, begins with Winston Churchill, who proved a vital mentor when she became Queen upon the premature death of her beloved father George VI in 1952.
‘He was the most seasoned prime minister she could have hoped for as a young monarch,’ adds Charles Anson. ‘Now she is the steadying hand for younger and less experienced politicians.’
The documentary also looks closely at the Queen’s relationship with Labour’s Harold Wilson. The two got on very well. She called him Harold – most prime ministers are Mr or Mrs – and even allowed him to smoke his pipe inside the audience room.
Relations with Margaret Thatcher, however, began badly when the PM signed off a letter to the Queen with ‘Yours sincerely’, earning her a stern rebuke from a courtier who informed her it should be, ‘I remain Ma’am, your humble and obedient servant.’
Thatcher found the weekly audiences terrifying. She showed up 45 minutes early and was mocked for her elaborate curtsies. The big falling-out came in 1986 when Mrs T went up against Commonwealth leaders who wanted sanctions for apartheidera South Africa. She believed this would further impoverish the nation, but the Queen sided with the Commonwealth, as became clear when her press secretary gave an off-the-record briefing to the Press calling the PM ‘uncaring, socially divisive and confrontational’. But, as the documentary reveals, the Queen’s respect grew for Britain’s first female PM. When she resigned, the Queen gave her the rare honour of becoming a member of The Order of Merit. And she attended Thatcher’s 80th birthday, where they were seen ‘walking around together smiling and laughing’.
John Major was in power during the collapse of Prince Charles’s marriage to Princess Diana, while Tony Blair had to help steer the monarchy through its most difficult time, with the death of Diana. Blair joked about his meetings with the Queen, saying, ‘There are only two people to whom a prime minister can say what he likes about his Cabinet colleagues, the wife and the Queen.’ It did not go down well.
More recently, David Cameron was overheard betraying the Queen’s confidence over Scottish independence when he joked she had ‘purred’ with pleasure to discover her realm was not going to be broken up. Then a year ago Boris Johnson put her in the awkward position of agreeing to suspend parliament, ahead of the UK’S scheduled departure of the eu– only to then have the move deemed illegal.
‘A constitutional monarchy tempers extremism,’ says Charles Anson. ‘And the Queen is always constructive in her advice. Jim Callaghan described it as her not offering her prime ministers friendship but friendliness. And that’s something they often need – the chance to speak frankly to someone who wants to help.’
Nicole Lampert The Queen And Her PMS, next month, Channel 5.