Her Majesty (29 page)

At 7.43, the now ex-Prime Minister walks out trying to smile. It is self-evidently a wrench. In the process of holding his head up high, he forgets himself, gets in the car first and leaves Mrs Brown to walk round and get in on the other side herself. As the Browns leave in their two-car motorcade, Mr Brown probably doesn’t notice a parting gesture from the royal side. The Queen’s equerry, standing on the gravel, performs a valedictory bow (even though there is nothing in the equerry training manual about bowing to ex-prime ministers).

Moments later, the Queen’s (then) Press Secretary, Samantha Cohen, hands round notices on thick cream paper embossed with the Crown. They declare: ‘The Right Honourable Gordon Brown had an audience of the Queen this evening and tendered his resignation as Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury, which Her Majesty accepted.’ For the next half an hour, Britain has no Prime Minister at all. Should a meteorrite land or enemies invade, it’s down to the Queen to take the initiative. David Cameron receives the call from the Queen’s Private Secretary and begins the journey from the House of Commons to the Palace with his wife, Samantha. Reflecting on it all a year later in his Downing Street study, Cameron thinks that Brown rather rushed things. ‘My view is it would have been easier if he’d spent the night here and had gone the next morning. But I think he felt “I don’t want to stay here any longer than I should” and everyone at the Palace was very accommodating. From my point of view, it felt as if it was all happening in a tearing rush when it didn’t need to.’

There is a sudden change of mood in the Quadrangle, bolstered by the weather. The drizzle subsides, the evening sun peers out and bathes the inside face of the East Front in a honeyed glow. But David Cameron
is not yet Prime Minister. He does not yet enjoy the trappings of office. For the moment, there is no police motorcade for him. And so, while Britain and the Queen sit in limbo, the news choppers hover overhead transmitting pictures of the future Prime Minister sitting at traffic lights in Trafalgar Square. On he travels, stuck behind a commuter on a Vespa and a chap having a lesson in a BSM car. ‘It was wonderful,’ Cameron recalls. ‘It was just terribly British. There’s no other country in the world which has this sort of changeover. In America, they have this grand occasion weeks later. But we have a vaguely farcical moment where you’re stuck in the Mall with people taking pictures, traffic blocking the car and I’m desperately wondering what I am going to say on the steps of Downing Street.’

As the traffic stops and starts, the reporters in the Palace Quadrangle are earning their keep, filling in time with every bit of trivia they can muster. The BBC Radio Five Live reporter tells her listeners that Cameron will be the first Prime Minister who is younger than all the Queen’s children. BBC Television’s royal correspondent, Nicholas Witchell, informs viewers that Mr Cameron will become the youngest Prime Minister since Lord Liverpool in 1812.

Cameron’s silver Jaguar sweeps in at 8.10, followed by a couple of plainclothes policemen in a BMW. ‘As the car turns into Buckingham Palace, it’s totally surreal. You can’t believe it’s happening,’ Cameron recalls. ‘You’ve seen this on the television so many times and you can’t believe you’re actually doing it.’ The equerry and the page greet Mr and Mrs Cameron and usher them inside. He is taken up to the Private Audience Room where, officially, he ‘kisses hands’. Except that he does not. ‘It’s a myth,’ says Cameron. That will all happen the next day in a formal ceremony when everyone has a little more time and is a little less stressed. The Queen asks Cameron if he can form a government. Yet he has no overall majority and is still in discussions with the third-place Liberal Democrats. She has asked an interesting question. Looking back, Cameron jokes that it was not a straightforward answer. ‘I like to think I was one of the first prime ministers in a long time who, when asked to form a government, instead of saying, “Yes, Your Majesty,” said: “Well, I’ll do my best. I’ll get back to you!”’

It’s not a long audience. As Tony Blair recalls in his own memoirs, new prime ministers tend to be tired and preoccupied and, in his own case, ‘looking a trifle manic’. Before Cameron leaves, the Queen invites his wife, Samantha, to come in for a brief but friendly chat (Tony Blair recalls the Queen ‘clucking sympathetically’ with Mrs Blair about the sudden upheavals for the family). At the same time, the Queen’s page comes out into the Quadrangle to alert Cameron’s driver and policemen, who are
chatting on the gravel, to snap into action. They’re rapidly discovering a different pace of life already. The Queen’s Private Secretary, Christopher Geidt (he has yet to become Sir Christopher), knows that the new Prime Minister must now face the world and offers him a short breathing space. As Cameron recalls: ‘He kindly said: “If you want to use my office, there’s time to collect your thoughts before the next step.” So I popped into his office and thought a bit more about what I was going to say.’

At 8.35, the Camerons emerge from the King’s Door. The Queen’s tally of British prime ministers has now reached a dozen. The next tenant of Number Ten Downing Street escorts his pregnant wife to the right-hand door of the car and shuts it before walking round to the other side. He waves at the broadcasters on the way out. Within minutes, they are handed another piece of paper announcing: ‘The Queen received the Right Honourable David Cameron this evening and requested him to form a new administration. The Right Honourable David Cameron accepted Her Majesty’s offer and kissed hands upon his appointment as Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury.’

It’s not exactly a surprise but it ends the uncertainties of previous days. As the reporters broadcast these words to the nation, they don’t see another car quietly pulling away from the Palace’s Garden Door. The Queen has kept the Gentlemen Ushers waiting quite long enough at the Turf Club. It’s time for dinner.

The Queen’s actual discussions with her prime ministers have remained locked in the vaults of their collective memories to an astonishing degree. But we have had many indications of the tone and atmosphere. The late Lord (James) Callaghan summed it up neatly when he said: ‘What one gets is friendliness but not friendship. She’s very interested in the political side – who’s going up and who’s going down. But not so passionate about the MLR[minimum lending rate].’

Like most prime ministers before him, David Cameron genuinely looks forward to his Wednesday trips to the Palace: ‘The audiences are very friendly, enjoyable occasions because it’s just the two of you so you can say what you like and she can ask what she likes. As well as talking through what the government’s up to, there is quite a lot of businesslike stuff – my travel, her travel, state visits and so on.’

Both the Prime Minister and the Queen like to roam well beyond affairs of state. When Cherie Blair was pregnant with Leo, one of the first people whom Tony Blair informed was the Queen.

Sir John Major found the Palace far more comfortable on the inside than it is perceived to be from the outside. ‘What seemed remote from
afar became warm and very human at close quarters,’ he says. And he never felt any need to tiptoe round any subjects. ‘Nobody else is present, except the occasional corgi. That trust is absolute. I never held back on anything I wished to say to the Queen and I believe that the reverse is equally true.’ The audience, he believes, is a vital element of sound government. ‘The Queen sees state papers but she doesn’t know what is not yet committed to paper. She doesn’t know what is in the mind of the Prime Minister. Without the weekly audience, that crucial line of communication would be broken.’

Those working close to the Queen all testify that she genuinely enjoys the daily business of politics. As one puts it: ‘It’s what she’s
for
.’ She is genuinely interested in the human dynamics of it all. It was the personal dimension, as much as the political, which intrigued her about the formation of her first Coalition Government. ‘She asked a lot about it,’ says David Cameron. ‘She asked how we were all getting on.’

Prince William, who has already met many of the Queen’s various prime ministers around the world, has no doubt that these audiences are appreciated equally by both parties. ‘If you think how many meetings she’s had with different prime ministers at different times it’s incredible,’ he says. ‘Some of them must wish she would turn round and tell them what to do! But she always speaks very highly of having these meetings.’

During the British parliamentary year, the audiences are weekly (officially, the Prime Minister has ‘an audience of the Queen’, not the other way round). And every summer, the Prime Minister is invited to stay at Balmoral, attend the Braemar Highland Games (optional) and enjoy a Royal Family barbecue cooked by Prince Philip (not optional). It can be a strange experience. Tony Blair has written that his first Balmoral weekend was ‘a vivid combination of the intriguing, the surreal and the utterly freaky’ fortified by ‘rocket fuel’ cocktails and a breakfast, lunch and dinner ‘out of Trollope or Walter Scott’. No wonder, he observed, the Royal Family eat sparingly.
^*

Blair’s first visit was, understandably fraught, given the recent death of Diana, Princess of Wales.

Sir John Major has fond memories of walks down to the Balmoral cricket ground and of trips to tea at Birkhall. ‘The Queen usually drove me there and we would have tea and cakes with the Queen Mother and I would admire her collection of Spy cartoons and look with awe at the
stack of
Dad’s Army
videos.’ Later on, there might be a black-tie dinner or, more often than not, that barbecue cooked by Prince Philip and another member of the Royal Family. ‘At the end of those very informal – and hugely enjoyable – evenings, the Queen and other members of the family would wash up and any guests who offered to do so would be politely repulsed,’ says Major. But, in among all the pleasantries, there would also be a lengthy one-on-one audience, too. ‘Nobody’s around in August, so there’s always a lot to catch up on in September.’

The Queen’s political antennae extend far beyond her audiences and what she gleans from the media (newspapers and radio in the morning, television news at night). Every morning at eleven o’clock, she telephones her senior Private Secretary and asks an entirely redundant question: ‘Are you free to come upstairs?’ No Private Secretary in history, as far as anyone knows, has replied: ‘Sorry, but I’m a bit tied up.’ They will run through any events touching on the monarchy – casualties in Afghanistan, a Cabinet reshuffle in New Zealand, thoughts for the Christmas broadcast – and the Queen’s diary. After half an hour, she will call down to ask her Deputy or Assistant Private Secretary if they might be ‘free’ and one of them will bring up the paperwork, including documents for signature. There are usually around a dozen and, depending on the document, she will write either ‘Approved ER’ or ‘Elizabeth R’ (the royal signature is known as the Sign Manual). It might be army regulations, royal warrants, Letters of Credence for ambassadors or a parliamentary Bill. It’s more than a regal production line. The Queen will not read every clause but she will know exactly what she is signing. When this sort of stuff is coming across your desk day after day, you have a feel for the pace and nature of what is happening across your kingdom.

Every few weeks, she receives her Vice-Chamberlain, the government whip who is the House of Commons go-between with the Palace. He or she will turn up carrying the wand of office, a black staff which unscrews in the middle, and then relay various messages between MPs and the Monarch. These might involve the Queen’s Speech or a House of Commons resolution to wish her a happy birthday. The Vice-Chamberlain must also write that daily ‘message’, the personal summary of what is happening in Parliament.

As we have learned, these may sometimes be light-hearted but they are also a reflection of genuine backbench feeling. The Queen doesn’t want a constant diet of glowing reports about government triumphs. The message may be a closely typed side of A4 paper but it will be read and digested, along with a selection of state papers and anything else she finds in her Red Box. Every night at seven o’clock one of these battered
briefcases – leather on the outside, metal within – will be sent from the Private Secretary’s Office.

By eight the following morning, it will have been returned, with anything which has caught the Queen’s eye underlined in red pencil. Inside is material for signature, material she is obliged to see (not least the top copy of the latest Cabinet minutes) and material she will be interested to see (a sheaf of Foreign Office telegrams, perhaps). On weekday evenings, the box is a smaller model known as a ‘Reader’. It can be piled high, unless there is an evening engagement or a state banquet in prospect, in which case the contents may be reduced. But private secretaries are told that the Queen prefers to be given a little too much than run the risk of overlooking something important. At weekends, it’s a larger model called a ‘Standard’. Inside will be a broader selection of reading material plus weekly summaries from the Queen’s fifteen other realms around the world. Some of the Canadian briefings will be in French (no translation is required; the Queen is fluent in French). But it will all have been processed and returned by Monday morning. Even when the Queen would rather not read something, she gets on with it regardless. ‘A lot of material goes into her boxes, huge amounts of stuff about appointments that have to be in her name,’ says former Deputy Private Secretary Mary Francis. ‘It all goes in but not an awful lot comes back to you. She reads the Foreign Office telegrams and puts a tick on them, she reads the Cabinet minutes and puts a tick on them. You don’t very often get a question or a comment. But you know it’s all sinking in and almost certainly some of it gets played back when she meets the Prime Minister at her weekly meeting or has her audiences with new ambassadors.’

The Queen does not cut corners. If it’s in her Red Box, it’s there for a reason. ‘She is very assiduous and careful about reading things and when you discussed things with her, she had read them very carefully,’ says Francis. ‘And she was on top of them – not in an academic, intellectual way but she had certainly understood them and spotted the main messages and the main issues.’