A quiet Brexiteer?

ON the subject of the EU, this newspaper makes no claim to know what private views the Queen holds on Brexit.

Readers will make up their own minds about the significance of the claim from the BBC’s political editor Laura Kuenssberg yesterday that Her Majesty had told a lunch: ‘I don’t see why we can’t just get out. What’s the problem?’

They will also weigh in the balance a similar report made during the referendum campaign that in 2011 the Queen had said Europe was going in the wrong direction.

It is impossible to know conclusively what Her Majesty thinks on such major political questions and rightly so. Public trust in the monarchy rests in part on its political neutrality.

But consider this: wouldn’t it be odd if a woman with such vast experience in public life, who has known every Prime Minister since Churchill, didn’t hold strong views about Britain’s future relationship with the EU?

After all, this is an institution which in her lifetime has done so much to erode this country’s sovereignty. Isn’t it likely the sovereign personally feels this very keenly?

And isn’t she entitled, as head of the Commonwealth, to take a particular – and not necessarily Eurocentric – view of our place in the world?

In her characteristically upbeat and optimistic Christmas message, the Queen spoke of finding ‘courage or strength’ to overcome challenges ahead. We can only wonder to what she might have been referring.