Desperate David Cameron asked that the Queen directly intervene in the Scottish independence referendum when the polling started turning against him in the run-up to the 2014 referendum.
The former Tory prime minister has admitted for the first time that he dragged the supposedly neutral monarch into politics when he was confronted with polling showing the Yes campaign was edging ahead.
The Queen famously suggested to a well-wisher outside Crathie Kirk in Aberdeenshire on the Sunday before the vote that she hoped “people would think very carefully about the future”.
The enigmatic comment was read as a tacit endorsement of the status quo by the Better Together campaign. But Cameron has now admitted it came about because he had requested the Queen step in.
His remarks, which go further than those published in his memoir, are in a two-part BBC documentary being broadcast tonight and next week.
Cameron said: “I remember conversations I had with my private secretary and he had with the Queen’s private secretary and I had with the Queen’s private secretary – not asking for anything that would be in any way improper or unconstitutional, but just a raising of the eyebrow even you know, a quarter of an inch, we thought would make a difference.”
Of the Queen’s comment outside church, Cameron added: “It was certainly well covered [by the media], although the words were very limited, I think it helped to put a slightly different perception on things.”
