Queen Elizabeth II’s Prime Ministers
A look at several decades of meetings between Elizabeth II and the men and women who headed the British government.
One of the Queen of England’s main duties is meeting with the British Prime Minister on a weekly basis. Elizabeth II, the longest-reigning British monarch in history, has held these regular confabs with 14 prime ministers ranging from the magisterial cold warrior Winston Churchill and the Iron Lady Margaret Thatcher to the current office holder, Boris Johnson. The conversations which cover both the political and the personal are strictly confidential and there is no record kept.
Though the conversations have never been revealed, the connections between the monarch and her ministers can be discerned from memoirs and histories. Here is a look at some of those historic relationships:
Winston Churchill
Oct-1951-Apr 1955
The queen had a special fondness for her first prime minister, Churchill, the giant of a statesman whom many felt saved the country thanks to his determined leadership during the darkest days of World War II. Churchill had a warm friendship with Elizabeth’s parents, King George VI and the Queen Mother and represented the British people’s fighting spirit and glorious past. His coalition government had gone through a humiliating defeat at the end of the war and was briefly succeeded by the Labour Party, headed by Clement Atlee. He returned to the Prime Ministership in 1951 and Elizabeth was coronated in 1953 at age of 27.
Decades later, when asked which PM she enjoyed meeting with the most, the sovereign replied, “Winston of course, because it was always such fun.” One of the household staff confirmed this, reporting that “I could not hear what they talked about, but it was, more often than not, punctuated with peals of laughter, and Winston generally came out wiping his eyes.” Their favorite topic of conversation was a shared passion for horses, racing, and polo.
Anthony Eden
Apr 1955-Jan 1957
When Churchill’s foreign secretary took over for the ailing cold warrior in 1955, Anthony Eden was still handsome and dashing, but his health was damaged by a surgeon’s error during a gallstone operation in 1953. He enjoyed a warm relationship with Elizabeth. An aide confided, “He was very sensible that he was following the towering figure of Churchill who had felt towards her as if she were his granddaughter and spoke to her like that. He was very conscious that the queen might think him [Eden] a lesser figure in that post but the queen treated him so well that he didn’t feel like that…He always spoke of her with warm affection.” His tenure was marked by the devastating Suez crisis in which British forces, along with those of Israel and France, were forced to withdraw from Egypt.
Harold Macmillan
Jan 1957-Oct 1963
Despite a naturally dour manner, the next prime minister, Harold Macmillan, energetically pushed past the Suez affair and sought to reconfirm Britain’s stature as a great nation. He had a friendlier relationship with the queen than the nervous Eden. Like Churchill, Macmillan had an American mother and a reverence for the monarchy. Their meetings were respectful, but they shared a love of political gossip that Macmillan happily provided. He called her “a great support, because she is the one person you can talk to.”
Harold Wilson
Oct 1964-Jun 1970
Mar 1974-Apr 1976
Labour leader Harold Wilson attained the office after having defeated Macmillan’s Conservative successor, Sir Alec Douglas-Home, who held the office of PM for only one year. Wilson was Elizabeth’s first prime minister from a lower-middle-class background. Despite his shining record at Oxford, he retained his Yorkshire accent and enthusiastically followed his local soccer club. He was close to the queen in age, enjoyed women’s company and respected their intelligence. For their first meeting, he brought along his family, who waited in the antechambers. Traditionally, the PM arrives alone. In spite of some initial awkwardness, Elizabeth warmed to Wilson’s informal manner and she took the unusual extra step of inviting him to stay for drinks after the meeting. He offered a chance for the monarch to stay in touch with her subjects that the previous high-born PMs could not.
James Callaghan
Apr 1976-May 1979
Nicknamed “Sunny Jim” and standing at six foot one, James Callaghan was the tallest of the queen’s prime ministers. His meetings with the queen were a brief interlude of calm in the midst of political turmoil. Numerous strikes crippled the country and later brought down Callaghan’s Labour government. He had a relaxed relationship with the queen. She even once threw away protocol and placed a flower in his buttonhole during a stroll at Buckingham Palace. But he realized she had the same outgoing manner with all of her prime ministers — the one exception being Churchill who was a father figure. “What one gets is friendliness but not friendship,” Callaghan said.
Margaret Thatcher
May 1979-Nov 1990
You might think that the chats between the queen and the nation’s first female prime minister would be a touch more relaxed than those of Margaret Thatcher’s male counterparts. But there was very little, if any, “girl talk” with the Iron Lady who kept the encounters strictly professional, formal and somewhat frosty. Whereas Elizabeth and Callaghan enjoyed debating the issues of the day, Thatcher had a tendency to lecture. “The queen found that irritating,” a general close to the monarch confided. A royal relative once compared the two leaders. The comforting queen was like the mother to Great Britain while the strict Thatcher was the headmistress who made sure you obeyed her rules. In office from 1979 to 1990, she turned out to be Elizabeth’s longest-serving PM.
John Major
Nov 1990-May 1997
Thatcher’s Conservative successor, John Major, proved to be a calming influence on the queen as she was dealing with the scandalous estrangement and possible divorce of her son Charles, the Prince of Wales and his wife, Diana. The audiences were like mutual support sessions as Major was coping with crises of his own including the Gulf War and economic downturns.
Tony Blair
May 1997-Jun 2007
After the Conservatives were swept away in 1997, Labour leader Tony Blair was determined to lead Great Britain into the 21st century and to modernize what he regarded as antiquated institutions such as the government’s relationship with the monarchy. In his frank memoirs, he gently mocked such traditions as the expected visit to the royal home Balmoral: “A vivid combination of the intriguing, the surreal, and the utterly freaky. The whole culture of it was totally alien, of course, not that the royals weren’t very welcoming.” Further cooling of royal relations occurred when Princess Diana died in a car crash and Blair referred to her as “the People’s Princess.” The queen regarded this characterization as potentially alienating her from her subjects and turning Diana into an icon of popularity. But Elizabeth won Blair’s respect when she addressed the nation and publicly joined in their grief.
Gordon Brown
Jun 2007-May 2010
Blair resigned in 2007 due to his unpopular support of the Iraq War. His chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, took over the reins of government. Although his rough-hewn manner contrasted with Blair’s smoothness, Brown enjoyed a close relationship with the queen who occasionally jokingly imitated his Scottish accent. The banking crisis of 2010 led to his ouster.
David Cameron
May 2010-Jul 2016
Brown's successor brought a return to tradition. The queen had first seen the future Conservative leader David Cameron when he appeared at age 8 with her son Prince Edward in a school production of Toad of Toad Hall at Eton. His coalition government with the Liberals has called for greater financial independence for the Royal Family and he enjoyed a warm relationship with the queen who happens to be his fifth cousin, twice removed.
Theresa May
Jul 2016-Jul 2019
The queen reportedly enjoyed a far sunnier relationship with Theresa May than she did with her first female prime minister, Thatcher, the two sharing discussions about the countryside, church and Elizabeth's grandchildren. While May's three-year tenure was consumed — and ultimately derailed — by the highly charged Brexit process, the queen was said to have been sympathetic to the difficulties her 13th PM endured.
Boris Johnson
Jul 2019-Sept 2022
The Boris Johnson era got off to a rocky start when he was accused of dragging the queen into a partisan battle by asking her to suspend Parliament until shortly before the country's scheduled October 31, 2019, departure from the EU. However, they at least resumed a proper working relationship a few weeks later, when the Conservatives easily won the general election and Johnson formally accepted the offer to form a government. The following year, after Johnson was hospitalized with COVID-19, Elizabeth graciously allowed him to use the Buckingham Palace grounds to exercise his way back to full health.
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