Look that says it all about her views on pushy Blair

DURING her 64 years on the throne, the Queen has dealt with 13 prime ministers, starting with Sir Winston Churchill. She got on well with some, less well with others — and Tony Blair fell firmly into the latter category.

‘Too much too quickly,’ was her unguarded summary of him.

A traditionalist to the core, the Queen quickly came to the conclusion that New Labour was no friend of the monarchy or the values she believes it embodies.

She distrusted its plans for the reform of the House of Lords and its decision to accommodate homeless people in Admiralty Arch at the other end of the Mall to Buckingham Palace (‘a publicity stunt,’ she called it).

After her regular Tuesday meetings at the palace with Blair, she’d often emerge tut-tutting under her breath. Once, he made a faux pas when he referred to ‘the Golden Jubilee’. The Queen corrected him with a sharp: ‘No, Mr Blair; my Golden Jubilee.’

In the days after Diana’s death, when she suspected the government of trying to expropriate the Princess for its own political ends, her irritation with him grew.

The Queen was not amused, to put it mildly, when Blair described Diana as the ‘People’s Princess’. She disliked the implicit challenge the term posed to her own position as the Queen of all her people.

She even objected to Blair being represented on the funeral committee, which had been set up under the chairmanship of her Lord Chamberlain.