Will Boris Johnson be forced to intervene in the royal crisis?

Boris Johnson gives the distinct impression that he is reluctant to get involved in Megxit, especially as he hasn’t actually finished on Brexit yet. Having claimed, inaccurately as it turned out, to have “got Brexit done”, he has enough to do on that, on Covid and on the economy more generally than to have to add royal rift to his “to do list”. So far he has confined himself to routine praise of the Queen (“highest admiration”) and a promise not to get involved in what the police used to call “a domestic”.

However, the sheer scale of the television audience and the gravity of some of the claims being levelled against the palace are so serious that he may yet have to furnish his advice to the Queen on the current crisis. Constitutionally, she is obliged to take it, even when it relates to members of her own family and her staff. She might feel doubly dubious about doing so, given that Johnson wasn’t entirely frank with her about the prorogation of parliament last August. That was soon ruled unlawful and void by the Supreme Court, and she might well feel ill-used by her prime minister. Yet she knows the rules of the game and will follow them.

What though could Johnson advise her to do? He has plenty of personal experience of family rifts, embarrassing racist remarks and no doubt knows the personalities involved. However, presentation isn’t necessarily his strong point, and he’s hardly the most woke personality in public life. His advice, if sought or offered, is likely to be non-committal.

Would Johnson, though, as Conservative leader, try to make some political capital out of the crisis, turning it into another culture war to distract from his own shortcomings and the bigger immediate threats to the nation’s health? Is it an irresistible opportunity for a bit of dog-whistle populism, particularly now that a shadow minister has called for the allegations of racism to be acted upon? You’d hope the prime minister would not, and that he’d continue in public to repeat bland assertions of the immense value of the monarchy as a unifying institution, and wish the whole imbroglio away.

If it does not, Johnson may have to think again. The last prime minister to guide the Queen out of a crisis was Tony Blair, though he got little thanks for it. When Diana, Princess of Wales died in Paris in 1997 the royal family, including her two sons, were in Balmoral. The Queen and Prince Philip thought that Harry (12) and William (15) should stay there to grieve for their mother, in private, rather then come down to London for some sort of New Labour-inspired publicity stunt.

Their initial refusal to engage with the public outpouring of grief was starting to make them extremely unpopular, making them appear uncaring and cold, the usual recurring complaint about the Windsors. Small things like the stubborn refusal to fly the royal standard at half-mast because of protocol just made much of the public angry. The days of deference and the stiff upper lip had long past, for good or ill. The “Dianafication” of Britain was well underway. Prince Philip reportedly told Blair, indirectly, to, f*** off when he advised involving the boys in the funeral arrangements. It was not to stand.

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In Blair’s memoirs he freely admits that as soon as the news arrived from Paris he was “trying to work out how it should play ... I know that sounds callous. I was genuinely in grief ... but I also knew that this was going to be a major national, in fact global, event like no other ... I had to work out how it would work out.”

So he did, and he was first out of the traps with his famous “people’s Princess” soundbite which fitted the national mood perfectly, its very cheesiness a reflection of the public displays of affection that were so striking at the time. His assured touch contrasted with that of the new Conservative leader, William Hague. Thrashing around for something to add, Hague suggested that Heathrow airport be renamed in her honour, and that Blair was interfering in the arrangements for the funeral. True or not, Hague both misjudged public opinion and dragged the Queen into a political brawl. Boris Johnson, then a mere journalist, confined himself to shaking his head at the “Latin American carnival of grief”, adding his own trademark light touch of near-racism to the debate.

Usually, things are the other way around, because the Queen avoids controversy and has herself a usually deft political touch. John Major had to nudge her gently toward paying income tax back in 1993, and no doubt had to share his views in the collapses in the marriages of Anne, Charles and Andrew during his premiership. Further back, Winston Churchill had to advise her that the cabinet didn’t approve of Princess Margaret marrying a divorcee, Peter Townsend, when their love affair turned serious in 1955. Such interventions, though, are rare indeed, and normally the flow of wise counsel is in the other direction.

Johnson is the Queen’s 14th prime minister, over some seven decades or so. All the premiers who have spoken or written about their dealings and weekly audiences with her praise Her Majesty for the vast experience and knowledge she can bring to bear, and the fact that whatever you say to her stays with her, and is never leaked. That is refreshing for a politician. What she makes of the row with Harry we probably won’t know for a long time, if ever. Nor will we learn her opinion of Johnson. We can guess though that the “highest admiration” he has for her isn’t reciprocated.