A BBC journalist has claimed the Queen would want the Union to stay together amid hours of running commentary on her condition.
Nicholas Witchell has been speaking on the BBC News channel – which has replaced all scheduled programming on BBC One – on and off since it was announced she was in ill health earlier on Thursday.
He said the Union of England and Scotland was “very close to her heart” though conceded there was no way to know this for sure as she must remain politically neutral in public.
The Royal Family have rushed to Balmoral, their Aberdeenshire residence, where the Queen has been living since the beginning of the summer because she was not well enough to travel back to London.
Buckingham Palace has said doctors are concerned about the Queen’s health but that the monarch is “comfortable”.
Witchell – who drew ire earlier today by speculating that the Queen may have cancer – said Balmoral was “a favourite residence” of the monarch.
He said there she harboured “undoubted private concern about the state of the Union” while speaking about her links to Scotland.
“That is something that is very close to her heart but privately close to her heart because she – above all – recognises the constraints of her constitutional position.
“She would never express a view on that but I think it is very important to her to feel that the United Kingdom would remain the United Kingdom.
“But look, this isn’t an afternoon to be going into that.”
Former prime minister David Cameron was caught on camera claiming the Queen had “purred down the line” when he called her to tell her Scotland had voted to remain in the Union in 2014.
