‘The Crown’: Did the Queen Ask Tony Blair for a Royal Family PR Plan?

No matter what you think about Tony Blair, it's impossible to ignore the fact that he completely changed the Labour party during the late 1990s. With the aid of people like Alastair Campbell, who were experts in public relations, he gave his party a massive boost and won the general election in 1997. During his time as Prime Minister, he also helped usher in an era known as "Cool Britannia," which was characterized by a sense of optimism and creativity throughout the United Kingdom.

The latest and last season of The Crown depicts this time frame. The premiere episode includes a scene that could surpass Ghost Diana as the show's most bizarre moment. In the dream sequence, the Queen is ill and imagines Blair becoming King Tony (kudos to the choir for their choral cover of "Things Can Only Get Better" by D:REAM).

The TV show implies that the Queen was very aware of how influential Blair was and may have felt uneasy about it. In episode six, titled Ruritania, we see the Queen requesting Blair's expertise in marketing to enhance the royal family's image. It begs the question of whether what we see on the show is fact or fiction, just like the dream sequence.

Blair started having weekly private talks with the Queen in 1997 after succeeding John Major as the Prime Minister.

Blair faced criticism in 2010 for his book, A Journey: My Political Life, where he divulged details about his meetings with the Queen. Peter Morgan, the creator of The Crown, accused Blair of taking a line from his 2006 film, The Queen. Blair had quoted the exact words the Queen used when she met her first prime minister, Winston Churchill, in 1952. Blair wrote that he felt inferior during the meeting: "So I got a sense of my, er, my relative seniority, or lack of it."

According to The New York Times, Morgan stated that there are three potential explanations. The first possibility is that his estimation was completely accurate, but this is not very probable. Alternatively, Blair might have decided to support Morgan's interpretation as the official stance, or there is a chance that he had a bit too much to drink and confused the events in the movie with those in reality. Morgan finds the last option entertaining since Blair always claimed he had never viewed the film.

Blair said that during their meetings, HRH apparently told him that they needed to learn from how things were handled after Princess Diana's death. Although it's not confirmed that the Queen asked him and his wife, Cherie, to create a PR campaign as depicted in the series, Blair mentioned on the Today programme in 2022 that the Queen realised on her own that she needed to address the nation after Diana's death and that a change was necessary. "She didn't need me to tell her. She sensed it and then took action. And when she responded, her response was perfect. She got the tone exactly right."

Blair called Diana the "People's Princess," which reportedly upset her. A few years later, the Queen and Prince Philip had to attend an uncomfortable public party with Tony and Cherie Blair to celebrate the new millennium. In her book, The Palace Papers, Tina Brown explains that the royal couple didn't like Blair, especially after his attempts to mediate the Queen's response to Diana's death were overly publicized. Blair believed that he had saved the monarchy's reputation with his nickname for Diana.

It's doubtful that Blair, New Labour and his group made a PR plan for the Queen. When the Queen passed away in 2022, The Sunday Times reported that she had expressed her authentic thoughts about Blair. A high-ranking French diplomat asked her who her preferred Prime Minister was, and she allegedly replied that it wasn't the correct inquiry. The proper inquiry should be who has been her least favourite, and the answer was Tony Blair.

Blair, on the other hand, has expressed his opinion about his portrayal in the last season of The Crown, and a representative for him has labeled it as "total nonsense."

Laura Martin works as a self-employed reporter, with a focus on popular culture.