Queen Elizabeth lost count of PMs, she played no favourites

Queen Elizabeth II once revealed she couldn’t recall whether she’d met more Conservative or Labour prime ministers during her reign that summed up her famously impartial approach to politics. 

“I hadn’t the faintest idea,” she told former foreign secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind, when asked about a conversation with the Shah of Iran. For her, it was never about party lines, but about personalities.

That dynamic is explored in Power and the Palace by royal correspondent Valentine Low. 

Tracing two centuries of monarch prime minister relationships, it begins with Queen Victoria and Lord Melbourne and moves right up to the present day.

Victoria, unlike Elizabeth, had little trouble voicing her opinions. She dismissed Robert Peel as “a cold, unfeeling, disagreeable man”, harboured a “visceral loathing” for William Gladstone, and adored Benjamin Disraeli, describing him as “full of poetry, romance and chivalry.” 

Disraeli, for his part, knew how to win her favour, “Everyone likes flattery; and when you come to royalty you should lay it on with a trowel,” he once quipped.

Queen never needed flattery, she preferred prime ministers who could talk to her like an ordinary person. 

Harold Wilson was one of her favourites; she loved hearing stories of his modest childhood in a Yorkshire back-to-back house. 

When he resigned, she marked their bond with a personal gesture, sending him a photo of the two of them standing in the rain at Balmoral.

Her rapport with John Major was equally warm. According to Valentine Low’s Power and the Palace, theirs was “one of the most positive relationships” of her reign. 

Even after he left office, Major was welcomed back for private palace conversations. 

The Queen trusted him implicitly, even relying on him to mediate during the turbulent years of Charles and Diana’s marriage. Diana herself affectionately dubbed him “the Hon John.”