Former PMS: Our reputations are being sullied
Sir John Major and Sir Tony Blair have revealed their anger about their fictional portrayals in The Crown
‘It was pretty gobsmacking what he was doing – effectively briefing against his own mother’
ONLY two people know what is said in private meetings between a monarch and their prime minister.
Between 1991 and 1997, the period covered by the next series of The Crown, those tete-a-tetes involved Queen Elizabeth II, Sir John Major and his successor, Sir Tony Blair.
On occasion, according to the Netflix drama’s version of events, rather more inflammatory conversations also took place between the premier and the Prince of Wales.
Senior royals are unable to express a view on such depictions; forced to keep their counsel.
With the Queen now gone, the King has maintained a dignified silence, although there is thought to be concern behind palace walls about the damage this series could inflict on his reputation.
Others are less bound by convention. The only other people party to those conversations today make their views clear: fiction is being presented as fact. Reputations are being sullied, damage is being done.
On this, Sir Tony Blair and Sir John Major are united.
Both are shown in scenes devised by writer Peter Morgan to tell a story. That story is a thread that runs throughout the fifth series; the Prince of Wales is frustrated with his lot, impatient for change, exasperated by the Queen’s approach and desperate to take the helm.
Sir Tony’s spokesman said that any suggestion he was brought into any such plot was “complete and utter rubbish”, while Sir John wrote to The Daily Telegraph to warn that such scenes “will be profoundly hurtful to a family who are still grieving for the very person on whose life the entire drama was founded.”
Sir Tony is introduced as a character in the final episodes of the series, which begins in 1991 and ends shortly after New Labour’s landslide election victory in 1997.
Prince Charles is shown trying to recruit him as an ally, suggesting they could work together to protect his own future and pave the way for him to marry Camilla Parker Bowles.
Asked to attend the handover of Hong Kong on July 1 1997, he decides to combine the visit with a final holiday on board the Royal Yacht Britannia before it is decommissioned.
At his request, Mark Bolland, his newly recruited spin doctor, arranges a one-to-one meeting with Sir Tony during the trip, during which Charles tells the prime minister that he has turned Labour from a “rusty old tractor into a gleaming sports car.”
“I think the Royal family needs a similar renovation, not just in size and cost, but also in terms of attitudes,” he says. “My parents can be a little hidebound in their ideas in, for example, how I should be permitted to live. Divorces, second marriages, these things exist and are a reality for people today.
“You understand that and you understand the public mood perhaps better than anyone.
“Don’t you think they would prefer to see a happy, remarried Prince of Wales rather than an unhappy, unmarried one?”
Throughout the series, as the Queen fights to keep the Britannia, Prince Charles quietly briefs against her, telling both Sir John and later to his successor, that he disagrees with his mother. It turns the prospective restoration of the yacht into something of a metaphor for the monarchy.
Speaking to Sir Tony about Britannia, Charles says: “There’s no point clinging onto the past. Magnificent though she is, the fact is she’s done over a million miles. Her glories belong to the past, she’s not fit for purpose today.”
Tony Blair It should come as no surprise that this is complete and utter rubbish.
“Of course, I have enormous respect for the people who advise the Queen but let’s be honest, there’s a lot of grey hair there and they do display a certain tone deafness at times.
“If we want to preserve what’s best about the Crown, then two modern, forward-thinking men might need to work together to protect not only the monarchy’s future but as heir to the throne, my future, too.”
The prime minister later tells his wife, Dame Cherie Blair: “It was pretty gobsmacking what he was doing – effectively briefing against his own mother. But I have some sympathy with him. It can’t be much fun being the Prince of Wales if you are an impressive man.”
The Blairs did have a tour of Britannia during the visit to Hong Kong but there is no suggestion that such a conversation took place.
Charles wrote a 3,000-word account of the event, called the Handover of Hong Kong or “the Great Chinese Takeaway”, extracts of which were first published by the Mail on Sunday in November 2005. He said of Sir Tony: “He is a most enjoyable person to talk to – perhaps partly due to his being younger than me. He also gives the impression of listening to what one says, which I find astonishing.”
Earlier in the series, Charles is shown trying to recruit Sir John to his cause. “What makes the Conservative Party the successful electoral force that it is?” he asks. “Its instinct for renewal and its willingness to make way for someone younger.”
He urges the prime minister to judge for himself “whether this institution is in safe hands” when he visits the Queen, then 65, at Balmoral.
Another scene shows him speaking to his wife, Dame Norma Major, about some members of the Royal family in disparaging terms.
Sir John was moved to comment about imagined conversations between him and both the late Queen and her son.