The Queen did back Brexit in the run-up to the EU referendum and said that she did not see why Britain could not “just get out” of the EU, the BBC has suggested.

Laura Kuenssberg, the BBC’s political editor, revealed that one of her sources claimed the Queen had said, over a private dinner, that leaving the EU would not be a problem.

The Sun newspaper later published the story in March under the headline “Queen backs Brexit”.

It caused an extraordinary row with Buckingham Palace, which said that the headline was “misleading”.

Kuenssberg told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that her “jaw hit the floor” when she was told about the Queen’s alleged comments, but she was unable to stand the story up with another source.

She said: “In a casual chat with one of my contacts, they said, ‘Do you know what? At some point this is going to come out, and I’m telling you now, and I don’t know if the BBC would touch it, but the Queen told people at a private lunch that she thinks we should leave the EU’. Apparently, at this lunch she said, ‘I don’t see why we can’t just get out. What’s the problem?’?”

The claim came as Lord Mervyn King, the former governor of the Bank of England, said that the UK should be “self-confident” about Brexit and must “stop pretending” that the UK will still be a member of the Single Market.

He said that Brexit will present “real opportunities” for economic reform and new trade deals and also suggested that the UK may need to leave the Customs Union.

Lord King warned that the European Union stands on the verge of two “existential problems” with the European monetary union on the brink of collapse as it struggles to cope with the migration crisis.

He said: “There are many opportunities and I think we should look at it in a much more self-confident way than either side is approaching it at present. “Being out of what is a pretty unsuccessful European Union — particularly in the economic sense — gives us opportunities as well as obviously great political difficulties.”

He added: “I don’t think it makes sense for us to pretend we should remain in the single market and I think there are real question marks about whether it makes sense to remain in the customs union.

“Clearly if we do that we cannot make our own trade deals with other countries.”

At the same time, Change Britain, a hardline Brexit group backed by Boris Johnson, claimed that the UK will be £450 million a week better off if it leaves the Single Market and the customs union. It said that the combination of scrapping EU budget contributions, Single Market rules and increasing exports after leaving the customs union could be worth more than £24 billion a year.

source : gulfnews