Queen Elizabeth and her prime ministers

Three cheers for the monarch on her platinum jubilee but sustained boos for her first minister

Queen Elizabeth’s platinum jubilee this weekend is a good time to talk about the prime ministers who have formed her governments over the last 70 years.

Winston Churchill was prime minister when she ascended the throne in 1952. He was the inspirational wartime prime minister and a legend in his own time; not as good in peace time as Labour’s Clement Attlee but for Elizabeth to have had Churchill as her first prime minister was an enormous boost to her confidence.

Of the three conservative prime ministers that followed only Harold Macmillan was in office long enough to have been significant. Anthony Eden made a mess of the Suez crisis in 1956 and was forced to resign and Sir Alec Douglas Home, who briefly succeeded Macmillan, was voted out in the 1964 general election.

Macmillan was prime minister for most of the emergency in Cyprus between 1955 and 60 and was credited with the idea that Britain did not need Cyprus as a base but bases in Cyprus, which paved the way for independence in 1960.

While self determination does not envisage retaining sovereignty over part of a colony on decolonisation as a precondition of granting independence, many Cypriots welcomed the employment the bases offered and the refuge they provided when all hell broke loose in 1974 – including to president Makarios whom the British helped escape to their base in Akrotiri and then to London.

Macmillan’s most memorable contribution to modern British history was his ‘winds of change’ speech in South Africa in 1960 that marked the end of empire and the emergence of the New Commonwealth, of which the Queen is head – a role she cherishes.

Harold Wilson, the Labour prime minister who came to power in 1964, was probably Elizabeth’s favourite prime minister. He was charming with a ready wit; the Queen is very sharp and famously enjoys witty repartee and Wilson was a master of the art. Once when in Moscow with Tony Benn, both smoking their pipes, Leonid Breznev, the Russian leader, playfully asked whether everyone in Britain smoked a pipe. “No it is not compulsory,” Wilson quipped.

Wilson liked and enjoyed his audiences with the Queen and the feeling was mutual although not flirty as it was between Queen Victoria and Benjamin Disraeli the previous century.

It could not have been easy for the Queen to like Edward Heath, who surprisingly won for the conservatives in 1970. For all his love of music and sailing, Heath was a cold fish and conspicuously uncomfortable with women.

He was replaced by Margaret Thatcher as leader in 1976 and Heath fell into the longest sulk in political history. Joining the European Economic Community in 1973 was his crowning achievement that was set to naught in 2020 when Britain left the EU.

Wilson, who returned to power in 1974, resigned for medical reasons in 1976 and James Callaghan became prime minister but the Queen did not warm to him in the same way. He was associated with “crisis what crisis?” during Britain’s “winter of discontent” in 1979 when most public service workers were on strike. He lost to Margaret Thatcher in 1979 and eventually repaired to the House of Lords.

If the Queen ever had a rival in a prime minister it was Thatcher. She must have dreaded her weekly encounters with the Iron Lady and was probably relieved to see the back of her when she was replaced by the nice John Major, the last prime minister the Queen is reputed to have genuinely liked.

Major lost to New Labour under Tony Blair in 1997. The Queen could not have enjoyed Tony Blair and his republican wife – too much bling bling and no class. The death of Diana caught the Queen napping and Blair went to town with the macabre and cheap opportunism of the People’s Princess at the Queen’s expense; in the end he is reviled and she is revered.

Gordon Brown, who succeeded Blair as Labour prime minister in 2007, may have been a difficult prime minister but correct and courteous to his sovereign, as was Theresa May who succeeded David Cameron after he lost the Brexit referendum in 2016.

Cameron became head of a coalition government in 2010, which was constitutionally very interesting for the Queen who is very knowledgeable about the constitutional niceties of government and she must have found dealing with him refreshing.

Cameron was asked to form a government not because he had won an overall majority but because Gordon Brown could not form an administration that commanded a majority in parliament and resigned. When that happens the convention is that the leader of the party with the most seats is asked to form a government if he can.

The British constitution is famously unwritten in a single document. Unlike the American Constitution, it is contained in various books like Walter Bagehot’s English Constitution, Erskine May’s parliamentary practice, and conventions, constitutional statutes and case law. It is flexible and complex and the Queen is at one with it as she personifies it in her royal persona.

In 2019 Johnson defeated Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn, a committed republican who would have sought to abolish the monarchy had he won. He was obviously unsuitable to be the Queen’s first minister but then again so was Johnson.

That, however, is another story. But Johnson was even economical with the truth with the Queen when he prorogued parliament in 2019 – for him, telling alternative truths to parliament was a mere bagatelle.

So three cheers for Elizabeth on her platinum jubilee but sustained boos for her first minister

Alper Ali Riza is a queen’s counsel in the UK and a retired part-time judge