The Queen ‘would have avoided speaking to Boris Johnson if he had tried to call snap general election during his last days in office’, officials claim in new book

• On July 6 Boris Johnson hinted he was considering calling snap general election
• But new book by Sebastian Payne claims he might have been stopped by Queen
• Journalist and author said ‘magic triangle’ of senior figures were ready to stop it
• Source quoted as saying No10 would be told the Queen couldn’t come to phone  

The Queen would have been ‘unavailable’ to talk to Boris Johnson if he had phoned her to speak about dissolving Parliament and calling a general election during his final days in power, a new book claims.

On July 6 Boris Johnson heavily hinted that he was considering calling a snap general election in a bid to get re-elected by the public amid attempts by Tory MPs to oust him over the Chris Pincher affair.

In the end it didn’t come to that as Mr Johnson resigned the following day after dozens of ministers left his government.

But a new book by journalist and author Sebastian Payne suggests that even if Mr Johnson had tried to call an election, he might have been prevented from doing so by the Queen avoiding speaking to him. 

The Queen would have been ‘unavailable’ to talk to Boris Johnson if he had phoned her to speak about dissolving Parliament and calling a general election during his final days in power, a new book claims. Pictured: The Queen welcoming newly elected Mr Johnson in July 2019

Under the Lascelles Principles – a constitutional convention – a monarch has the power to refuse a request from the prime minister to dissolve Parliament if the existing Parliament is still ‘viable’, if a general election would be ‘detrimental to the national economy’ and if the sovereign could find another prime minister ‘who could govern for a reasonable period with a working majority in the House of Commons’.

Mr Payne claims a ‘magic triangle’ of senior figures – Sir Graham Brady, the chairman of the 1922 Committee, Simon Case, the Cabinet Secretary, and Edward Young, the Queen’s chief courtier – were ready to prevent Mr Johnson from calling a general election, the Telegraph has reported.

A Whitehall insider is quoted as saying: ‘If there was an effort to call an election, Tory MPs would have expected Brady to communicate to the palace that we would be holding a vote of confidence in the very near future and that it might make sense for Her Majesty to be unavailable for a day.’ 

According to a second source, it would be ‘politely communicated to Downing Street’ that the Queen ‘couldn’t come to the phone’ if she received a request for a call about dissolving parliament.

Mr Payne’s book, titled The Fall of Boris Johnson, also describes how Welsh Secretary Simon Hart found out from one of his junior ministers that the prime minister was planning on replacing him, prompting his resignation.  

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