Queen Elizabeth II was secretly a Remainer, she never supported Brexit?

In 2016, there was a lot of conversation about whether Queen Elizabeth was pro-Brexit or whether she was a “Bremainer.” The Brexit vote happened on June 23, 2016, and I remember in the weeks before the vote, there was a lot of conversation that QEII was a closeted Brexiter, and that she told various Tory politicians that Britain had no need of the EU. Even more specifically, there were stories about QEII wanting Britain to strengthen its Commonwealth ties over European ties. While the “QEII is pro-Brexit” stories were denied and circulated in equal measure, she obviously did not speak publicly about it. Now, three years after her death, a new report claims that QEII actually wanted Britain to “remain” in the EU.

On one occasion the Queen did share her views, only to see them on the front page of The Sun a few years later. During the referendum campaign over whether Britain should leave the European Union, the paper published a front-page story under the headline “Queen Backs Brexit”. The article said that at a lunch at Windsor in 2011 the Queen had told the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, that she thought the EU was heading in the wrong direction. She allegedly said, with “venom and emotion”, “I don’t understand Europe.” Clegg later denied this was true, accusing Michael Gove of leaking the story.

Was the Queen really a Brexit supporter? Although Buckingham Palace complained to IPSO, it did not issue a strong denial of the story. There was a good reason for this: it was understood that to officially deny that the Queen backed Brexit would imply that she was a Remainer. (The Queen, of course, cannot vote, because she is above politics. In theory, other members of the royal family can, but in practice they do not.)

Now, years after that headline, evidence of what the Queen really thought about Brexit can be revealed. A senior minister who spoke to her in the early spring of 2016, three months before the referendum, recalls that she said, “We shouldn’t leave the EU.” They discussed the referendum, and she said, “It’s better to stick with the devil you know.”

This chimes with what a palace insider says of the late Queen’s views on Europe. Although she would read stories in the papers about Brussels bureaucracy and say, “This is ridiculous,” on a fundamental level she saw the EU as part of the postwar settlement, marking an era of co-operation after two world wars. As David Cameron put it, “She was so careful never to express a political view, but you always sensed that, like most of her subjects, she thought that European co-operation was necessary and important, but the institutions of the EU sometimes can be infuriating.”

News of the Queen’s views on Brexit reached Cameron, who immediately had to decide whether to use it in the Remain campaign. He chose not to, even though the Leave camp had no such scruples. But it is now clear: if the Queen had had a vote, she would have voted Remain.

[From The Times]

Honestly, put this in the same “ghost queen said a bunch of sh-t that no one ever bothered to repeat when she was alive” category as some of the royalist fan-fic about QEII hating the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. I always believed QEII was a Brexiter, right up until Britain voted to exit the EU and it created a huge mess in British and European politics. They don’t ever suggest that maybe QEII felt one way, then changed her mind when she saw how chaotic everything turned out. Oh, don’t forget this – one of the conversations, post-Brexit, was that the Windsors would have to spend more time sucking up to European allies. King Charles even followed through with that, making his first international trips (as king) to Germany and France as opposed to Commonwealth allies or British realms. That’s why Prince William has been to Poland more recently than he’s been to a Commonwealth country or realm as well. Brexit was framed as a sort of royal busywork project too.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.