THE late Queen “loathed” Boris Johnson, it has been claimed.
Writing in the Sunday Times, the paper’s chief political commentator, Tim Shipman, quoted sources suggesting the former Tory leader had overtaken Tony Blair as the monarch’s “least favourite” prime minister.
Across her 70-year reign, Queen Elizabeth dealt with 15 different prime ministers of the United Kingdom.The first was Winston Churchill, who had taken the role for the second time in 1951, one year before Elizabeth took the throne.
The final was Liz Truss, who was officially asked to form a government by the Queen just days before she passed.
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When Churchill retired, the Queen sent him a letter saying that no future prime minister would “ever for me be able to hold the place of my first”.
Reportedly once asked who had been her favourite prime minister by a French diplomat, the Queen said that the question should be who was her “least favourite”, with the answer being Tony Blair.
The late monarch was said to have hated the “people’s princess” term coined by Blair and his spin doctor Alastair Campbell for Diana.
However, one palace source suggested to The Sunday Times that the Queen’s dislike of Johnson had eclipsed Blair.
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The anonymous source told the paper after the Queen’s death: “At least she will be spared having to give Boris a knighthood.”
They went on: “I think she loathes Boris because of his behaviour."
"He went around referring to her as ‘Her Maj’ and he never gave her any useful advice. You would have expected a prime minister to help sort out the mess with Prince Andrew, but Boris couldn’t help because he was mired in scandal of his own."
Johnson – who was forced to step down as prime minister after lying about having known of allegations of sexually inappropriate behaviour leveled against a member of his government – was twice forced to apologise to the Queen.
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The first time came in 2019 after the Supreme Court ruled that his prorogation of parliament had not been legal.
The second came after it emerged that – in No 10 and on Johnson’s watch – two leaving parties had been held with staffers partying into the small hours on the same day that Queen Elizabeth was forced to attend the funeral of her late husband alone due to Covid-19 restrictions.
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