Nick Clegg has finally admitted a “grumpy” Queen Elizabeth did attack the EU over a lunch with him, a vindicated Sun reports today. The paper quotes Kevin Maguire’s New Statesman column which disclosed:

“Nick Clegg, who was also at the infamous 2011 Windsor Castle lunch, maintains that Her Majesty was merely grumpy about Europe and regretted the eclipse of the Commonwealth”.

Clegg took to Twitter last night to deny this new line: “I didn’t speak to Maguire and I didn’t tell friends Queen was grumpy.” The Sun‘s political editor Tom Newton Dunn asked why Clegg’s spokesman refused to make that denial on the record, to which Clegg did not reply. Clegg has changed his tune over the paper’s bombshell “Queen Backs Brexit” splash. When the story first broke he said he had “no recollection” of the royal conversation.

Newton Dunn says Clegg later hardened his line at the behest of Cameron spinners to claim the story was “nonsense” and “not true“. Now the New Statesman reports he has admitted to friends the Queen did criticise Europe after all, but he denies it. Coincidentally Maguire’s column also names one Bill Newton Dunn, a former LibDem MEP, as being present at the infamous royal lunch…