During her 70-year reign, Queen Elizabeth II had 15 Prime Ministers, from Winston Churchill to Liz Truss, who was enthroned just days before the Queen’s death. Aged only 25 when she succeeded her father in 1952, young Elizabeth II had by her own admission leaned on Churchill to help her fulfill her constitutional duties. At the end of his reign, it was the turn of the Prime Ministers to benefit from his experience during their weekly and very private audiences.
If the queen felt very close to Churchill, declassified documents show that she was furious at Margaret Thatcher’s refusal to impose sanctions against South Africa under apartheid. Her relationship with Boris Johnson was also rocky. But in 1997, at the time of the trauma of the death of Princess Diana, the monarchy could count on the quick-wittedness of a Prime Minister. Tony Blair, who called Diana a ‘people’s princess’, helped channel the national mood as the Queen faced intense popular pressure, and advised the palace to undo a constitutional straitjacket unsuited to the shock felt by the people. Alastair Campbell, a former journalist and former communications director for the Labor Prime Minister, remembers this particular time which changed the British monarchy. Maintenance.
The Express: In Winners, you call yourself a republican, opposed to the hereditary principle of the monarchy and to the “class system which prevents Great Britain from becoming a meritocracy…” but “how much you love the queen, that queen. She is no longer Your “But” has disappeared? Should your country become a Republic?
Alastair Campbell: [long silence]. It can’t happen. Growing up, we used to argue every Christmas when my mom made us turn on the TV for the Queen’s Speech. It was my first political opinion. I said: “But why do we have to watch this super rich woman who tells us what to think?” In my career as a journalist, I kept railing against the monarchy. In my political life, I was silent. When Diana died and I was in Downing Street, I became Buckingham’s de facto working partner.
And now… I don’t really know! I haven’t changed my mind fundamentally, the monarchical system represents something that’s contrary to my values, I’ve never fully understood the reasons why the British feel such a connection to the royal family, but the fact is that this link exists and that we must accept it. We can always analyze it, wonder if it suits the modern world, it’s useless: it’s a reality. I am convinced that the monarchy will survive long after the death of the queen, and after mine. So there’s no need to devote too much energy to thinking about the end of the monarchy here: there are already enough battles to fight, this one is a losing battle.
She was in danger in the 1990s. The Queen herself called the year 1992 “annus horribilis”, the start of the long marital drama between Charles and Diana, culminating in Diana’s death in 1997. The Queen’s popularity was in freefall. She came back up when she understood, thanks to Tony Blair, that Diana had to be given a funeral worthy of a “people’s princess”. Was the monarchy saved by the Prime Minister?
The Queen has always remained more popular than most politicians. But it’s true that there was a before and an afterannus horribilis and Diana’s death. The days following the accident, the queen had isolated herself in her Balmoral castle with her grandchildren, and the palace did not measure the immense popular movement in London in favor of the princess.
I don’t think you can say that Tony Blair saved her, because there were people in the royal circle who also understood that she had to react differently. What is certain is that we worked together for this, at the request of Buckingham Palace. When we were at the airport waiting for the repatriation of Diana’s coffin, David Airlie, the Queen’s senior adviser, asked Tony Blair and me to prepare the funeral. He was taken aback by an event that he knew was huge and complicated. He told us: “The death of the Queen or the Duke of Edinburgh, we are prepared, we know how to do it. But here, we know that we have to do something different and it is not our job, it ‘is yours.” The royal family needed to pay a royal tribute to Diana and it did. At that time, the monarchy changed. 1997 was the shock that allowed him to rediscover the damaged link with the country.
How ? You mention the battle at court between the “traditionalists” and the “reformists”, and this subtle strategy of continuity, summarized by a close friend of the Queen by quoting Cheetah of Lampedusa: “Everything has to change so that nothing changes”.
In this battle, the Reformers won because they found a way to adapt the system to the circumstances. They saved the tradition by marginal measures, taken over time, such as the opening of the palace to the public or the payment of taxes by the royal family. The most dramatic proof of their victory at the 2012 London Olympics came when the Queen agreed to film a scene with Daniel Craig/James Bond. When Prime Minister David Cameron offered it to her, she said yes straight away – except for the parachute jump! Same for his video with the Paddington bear or the invitation made to Brian May, the guitarist of the group Queen, to play on the roof of Buckingham Palace during the jubilee. Nothing was imposed on the queen, she never did anything unintentionally. But she knew that without the affection of the people, the monarchy is nothing.
She quickly understood the power of the media, making her coronation the first world televised event. And yet she never gave a single interview. The most famous person in the world is the quietest and least known in the world. Will Charles III be able to arouse the same affection without having the same mystery?
Psychiatrists have released a study according to which the queen is the famous personality of which the British dream the most. The explanation is that we don’t know anything about what she thinks, which makes it possible to pin anything we want on her. I don’t know if the “Show not tell” (“Show and Don’t Tell”) will continue with Charles. I once asked Prince William the question. He answered me: “I think the ship has sailed” (“The water has flowed under the bridges”).
When Charles gave his first speech, I was impressed. His words and his voice were stronger than they had been before, to the point that I wondered if, after all, kings don’t have something we don’t have! The feeling that Charles gave me is that he is part of this adaptable continuity of the institution. That Camilla is dubbed as a “queen consort”, it seems obvious today. Not so long ago, it was not even thinkable.
Since ultimately nothing changes, is Charles’s personality so important?
It’s a real question. In my interview with Prince William for the magazine QG (July 2017 issue), I asked him if the three of them – the Queen, Prince Charles and him – ever got together to discuss what their job should be. He replied “No, never”. He added : “You have to work out your own way”: everyone must find their way.