Queen Windsor has acted to defend her family’s feudal privileges after a charge of political bias. She has made a complaint about a Sun newspaper story to the Press Standards Organisation.
The Sun had reported that Windsor had forcefully criticised the European Union in conversation with Nick Clegg when he was Deputy Prime Minister.
The Rupert Murdoch-owned newspaper said that it had “two different and impeccably placed sources” for its report. Two anti-EU Conservative politicians are believed to also have been present.
Details of the complaint are not know but it seems to be about the accuracy of the story or headline. That headline said that “Queen Backs Brexit”. But the story reported only that the feudal head of state had criticised the EU well before the referendum was agreed.
The Sun report is the latest revelation to undercut an important monarchist justification for their feudal institution – that by being political neutral it unites the nation.
The conversation is believed to have been in 2011. Its disclosure now was widely seen as an intervention by the anti-EU Rupert Murdoch in the debate prior to the referendum on Britain’s continued membership of the Union.
The Financial Times suggested that the effects of the report were ‘likely to represent an ideal wedding present for Mr Murdoch. ‘The one absolute political certainty in Rupert Murdoch’s life is that he is anti-European Union. The other thread is that he hates the British establishment and the British aristocracy’, said Tim Luckhurst, a professor of journalism at the University of Kent”.