By James Simons-
Michael Gove was behind the Sun’s “Queen Backs Brexit story, former deputy Mp, Nick Clegg has claimed in an astonishing documentary to be aired on the BBC next Monday.
The story which was published by The Sun, gave the impression to readers that the Queen was backing Brexit, cited a bust up at a party in Buckingham Palace, in which the Queen was said to have angrily claimed that the EU was going in their wrong direction.
The Sun summed up the article with the conclusion that the Queen supports Brexit.
DOCUMENTARY
In the latest documentary, entitled ‘Brexit’, The Battle of Britain, to be aired on BBC2 on Monday, at 21.30 BT, Mr. Clegg was one of three key figures who spoke to Laura Kuessberg for the documentary, “Brexit”, The “Battle of Britain, which runs on Monday at 21.00bst on BBC2
LEAKED
Clegg emphatically claims in the documentary that Michael Gove leaked the story to the Sun to drag the Queen into it. He told the BBC “Michael Gove obviously communicated it well, I know he did. He gave this to The Sun.
“He leaked that, and I can see why he might think that’s an interesting thing to do. To try and drag the Queen into it, but it didn’t happen”.
He continued:”I mean, the idea that the Queen of all people would even bother to give someone as insignificant as a ‘here today, gone tomorrow deputy prime minister, is… so preposterous, so it was not true. ” I think it was very disrespectful for Michael Gove to have done that”.
IPSO RULING
The independent Press Standards Organization (Ipso)ruled the headline had been inaccurate, following a complaint from Buckingham Palace.
Ipso ruled that the headline of the article did not support the text. Even if the Queen had expressed discontentment with the EU, it did not prove she supported Brexit.
The regulator instructed The Sun to print the Ipso’s verdict and retract their story. However, the paper stood by their story, ipso concluded that The Sun implied that the Queen had breached her constitutional obligation not to meddle in politics.
IMPRESSION
The paper truly gave that impression, perhaps this was the impression they instinctively had.
The eye of media.com pointed out on our site and also to Ipso, via phone, that the Queens comments made in private cannot apply to her constitutional obligations.
The regulators have implied that none of the evidence expressed in the article, supported the definitive view that the Queen supported Brexit. It was on those grounds, the paper was judged to be in error.
The question is whether politicians should be able to manipulate the political process, by using the Queen in an attempt to bias the political process in the way allegedly done through the Sin Newspaper.
The Sun Newspaper is Britain’s largest selling daily paper. The National Readership Survey in 2012 stated that the Sun reaches an audience of 13.6m a week comprising of 12.8m print readers and 1.3m online readers.
Feature image By Nick-Clegg – This file was derived from Vince Cable and Nick Clegg by the budget.jpg:,
