Harold and the truth about HM’s favourite PM . . .

Of the Queen’s 15 prime Ministers, Labour’s harold Wilson is said to have been her favourite. But how true is that claim?

A timely new biography, harold Wilson: the Winner, by historian and Shadow Cabinet member Nick thomas-Symonds, examines the relationship. And at the book launch last tuesday — just before the Queen fell seriously ill — Wilson’s son Robin, 78, told me his father regularly mentioned his encounters with the monarch.

the retired mathematician revealed: ‘he talked about her wise counsel and said he could relax with her because he knew none of their conversations would ever be leaked.’

Wilson knew a thing or two about leaking: he seems to have been the source of many of the claims that he was the Queen’s favourite pM in the first place!

Within weeks of taking office in 1964, the newspapers were briefed — by the new pM himself — that he and the Queen were getting on famously. the two soon appeared together on the cover of the satirical private eye magazine, with the Queen telling her premier: ‘We can’t go on meeting like this.’

Although the Queen did attend a dinner at downing Street in 1976 to mark Wilson’s departure from office — an honour otherwise bestowed only on Winston Churchill — we will never truly know what she thought of him, as of so many other things.

And, in a constitutional monarchy, that is exactly as it should be.