Joanna Cherry: David Cameron asking Queen to intervene in indyref is 'massive scandal'
3 min read
A senior SNP MP has said it is a "massive scandal" that David Cameron asked the Queen to intervene for the pro-Union side during the Scottish referendum.
Joanna Cherry spoke out after the former PM made the admission in an interview for a BBC documentary on his time in office.
Mr Cameron said he had made representations to the monarch after a shock poll put the Yes campaign in the lead shortly before the 2014 poll.
Shortly afterwards, the Queen told well-wishers outside Crathie Kirk near Balmoral that she hoped "people would think very carefully about the future" when they voted.
Mr Cameron said her comments “put a slightly different perception on things” ahead of the referendum, which the pro-Union side won by 55% to 45%.
In the interview, Mr 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."
In a subsequent interview with the Today programme, Mr Cameron added: “I don’t want to say anything more about this, I’m sure some people would think it may possibly even be that I have already said perhaps a little bit too much.”
Ms Cherry said it was "outrageous" that Mr Cameron had tried to involve the monarch in the run-up to the 2014 vote.
In a tweet, she wrote: "Make no mistake what happened was not acceptable within a constitutional monarchy. A deliberate set up. This is a massive scandal."
"Whether or not this manufactured unconstitutional intervention made a difference to the outcome of the #indyref is irrelevant. The point is that it was intended to do so. Outrageous.
“It was part of a package of measures including outright lies which were intended to outweigh the fact that the #Yes campaign had won the arguments & the campaign.
"These are the sort of factors against which the Electoral Commission should protect #indyref2.”
Scotland’s First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, meanwhile told MSPs: “The revelations, if I can call them that, from David Cameron today say more about him than anybody else and really demonstrate the panic that was in the heart of the UK government in the run-up to the independence referendum five years ago.”
When asked if the Queen’s comments potentially altered the result of the referendum, SNP Westminster leader, Ian Blackford, told the BBC’s World at One: “I think all of us have got to be very careful that we don’t weaponise the Queen in this debate.
“What I am arguing is that it has to be seen as part of a wider campaign of the Government and there was black arts, there was a propaganda campaign..."
BUCKINGHAM PALACE 'DISPLEASED'
Elsewhere a Royal source told the BBC that Mr Cameron’s latest comments had led to “an amount of displeasure” at Buckingham Palace.
They said that “it serves no one's interests” for conversations between the Prime Minister and the Queen to be made public, adding: “It makes it very hard for the relationship to thrive.”
Mr Cameron also told the Today programme that he regretted making the “terrible mistake” of saying that that the monarch had “purred down the line” to him when he phoned her following the No vote.
A camera crew recorded the then PM telling former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg that he had "never heard someone so happy".
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