\u201cQUEEN BACKS BREXIT\u201d ran a striking headline across the front page of the\u00a0Sun\u00a0on March 6, 2016, three months ahead of the UK\u2019s referendum.<\/p>\n
The article, by then political editor\u00a0Tom Newton Dunn, claimed that the late monarch had been \u201chailed as a backer of Brexit\u201d following an unlikely \u201calleged bust-up\u201d with deputy prime minister\u00a0Nick Clegg\u00a0in which she left onlookers \u201cin no doubt about her views on Europe\u201d. The article led to a complaint to the Independent Press Standards Organisation which ruled that the headline was \u201csignificantly misleading\u201d.<\/p>\n
The story is widely believed to have been given to the\u00a0Sun\u00a0by then justice secretary and prominent Brexiteer\u00a0Michael Gove. Clegg himself told a documentary later that year that \u201cMichael Gove obviously communicated it \u2013 well, I know he did\u201d. Gove has never actually formally denied it, only saying disingenuously: \u201cI don\u2019t know how the\u00a0Sun\u00a0got all its information\u201d.<\/p>\n
Now we know the Queen believed in staying in the EU, at least according to a new book,\u00a0Power and the Palace, by the royal correspondent\u00a0Valentine Low. According to the book, serialised in the\u00a0Times\u00a0at the weekend, she told a senior minister in the spring of 2016 that \u201cwe shouldn\u2019t leave the EU\u201d and \u201cit\u2019s better to stick with the devil you\u00a0know\u201d.<\/p>\n
And what became of the protagonists behind the original\u00a0Sun\u00a0story? Gove is now the editor of the\u00a0Spectator. And\u00a0Tony Gallagher, the editor of the\u00a0Sun\u00a0who ran the original story and, even after being forced to publish a retraction still insisted \u201cyou\u2019re asking me if I accept we made a mistake \u2013 in all conscience I don\u2019t\u201d? He\u2019s now the editor of the\u00a0Times, the paper that ran the extracts at the weekend under the huge\u00a0front-page strapline \u201cThe Queen was a remainer\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cQUEEN BACKS BREXIT\u201d ran a striking headline across the front page of the\u00a0Sun\u00a0on March 6, 2016, three months…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":390488,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5226],"tags":[802,748,2000,299,5187,1699,4884,2452,519,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-390487","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brexit","8":"tag-brexit","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-eu","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-european","13":"tag-european-union","14":"tag-great-britain","15":"tag-media","16":"tag-royal-family","17":"tag-uk","18":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115131730245494711","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=390487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390487\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/390488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=390487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=390487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=390487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}