Former Royal aide says that the Queen did not support Brexit

A former royal aide to the Queen, Sally Osman, has revealed that the Queen didn't actually support Brexit.

The revelation about her late Majesty came during a television interview on CNN in which the former director of communications spoke about a newspaper headline claiming that the monarch backed the UK leaving the EU.

In the video, Osman brought up the headline “Queen backs Brexit” that she recalled appearing on the front page of The Sun tabloid around the time of the EU Referendum.

Host Christiane Amanpour asked Osman, “Did she?”, to which Osman laughed: “Err, I don't think so”.

Buckingham Palace said it had launched an official complaint with Britain’s press watchdog when the headline came out on 8 March 2016.

In its complaint, it outlined an occasion when the Queen allegedly vented her frustration with Brussels with the pro-EU Nick Clegg who was then deputy prime minister during a lunch at Windsor Castle.

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A video of Osman’s interview was posted in a Twitter thread by playwright Tim Walker. He also tagged Tory MP and Brexiteer Michael Gove who, Nick Clegg claimed at the time, was The Sun’s source for the story.

He wrote: “Any comment on this @michaelgove, given you were named as the source of the Sun’s ‘Queen backs Brexit’ lead during the referendum campaign?”

Press regulator Ipso ruled the headline was “significantly misleading” and had breached clause 1 (accuracy) of the editors’ code of practice and this was printed in a subsequent article in the paper following the ruling.

But, the editor of The Sun refused to believe he had done anything wrong and maintained that he would take the same action again.

Speaking to Radio 4 in 2016 after the ruling, Tony Gallagher said: “Do I accept we made a mistake? In all conscience, I don’t.”

He continued: “I don’t accept that we made an error at all. We made a judgment that the headline was right and that it was backed up by the story.”

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