AS he fought in vain to hold together his Cabinet, Boris Johnson managed to find time for his weekly audience with HM the Queen – we asked our panel of royal experts how that conversation would have gone down.
The Daily Mail’s Diary Editor Richard Eden says that if the Queen had an opinion, she would have got it across.
‘We certainly know that they do listen to her. Prime Ministers including Tony Blair have said that she has a very persistent way with them, and she asks probing questions, difficult questions. And he felt that he was often being jogged to maybe think again about something.’
Some have drawn parallels between the departure of Margaret Thatcher and this week’s events. But Dickie Arbiter, the Queen’s former press secretary, says the Queen will feel far different about the departure of Johnson to that of Thatcher.
‘I don’t think there would be parallels with them, because with Mrs Thatcher there would have been an element of sympathy in the way that it happened,’ he tells the programme. ‘This is something that’s completely different from what’s happening now and the Queen has never experienced that… the Queen admired Mrs Thatcher for having been so long the first female Prime Minister.’
The Daily Mail’s Royal Editor Rebecca English discusses a new set of unwanted headlines around the charities run by the Prince of Wales and the access given to wealthy philanthropists.
While there is no accusation of wrongdoing by the prince, she points out that ‘it does shine yet another unwelcome spotlight on the way that some of Prince Charles’s charities have been run in the past’.
Any criticism being levelled towards Charles is unfair, argues Dickie Arbiter, who questions why these stories are emerging now: ‘It seems that someone with an axe to grind is trying to create a bit of mischief.’
PLUS on the 40th anniversary of the day an intruder broke in to Buckingham Palace and made it into the Queen’s bedroom, the Daily Mail’s Editor at Large Richard Kay takes us on a fascinating trip down memory lane to the extraordinary summer of 1982.

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