Former prime minister David Cameron told the BBC as part of a series about his life in politics that he sought help from royal officials days before the Scottish independence referendum on September 18, 2014. He said he was under “mounting panic” the vote would be a loss after reading an opinion poll while staying at the Queen’s residence in Balmoral. He has insisted what was discussed was not “anything that would be in any way improper”.

In the run-up to the referendum, the Queen was supposedly concerned about the possibility of Scotland opting out of the United Kingdom, as was the then-prime minister.

A Sunday Times poll on September 7 put the Yes campaign ahead, which Mr Cameron said caused panic in Downing Street.

He said the poll, which was published while he and his wife, Samantha, were staying at Balmoral, “hit me like a blow to the solar plexus”.

He said there followed urgent conversations between Downing Street and Buckingham Palace to see if the Queen could comment while still remaining within the constitutional boundaries of neutrality.

He 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 it would make a difference.”

A week later, the Queen later urged people to “think very carefully about the future”, a comment made to a well-wisher outside a church on the Balmoral estate, which became one of the main talking points of the referendum campaign.

At the time, the BBC’s royal editor said her words were “more of an observation than an intervention”.

Buckingham Palace said any suggestion the Queen was seeking to influence the outcome of the referendum was “categorically wrong”.

Officials insisted the monarch was above politics, and the issue of Scotland’s future was a matter for the people.

Mr Cameron said the Queen’s words on the issue were “very limited but helped to put a slightly different perception on things”.

Scotland went on to reject independence by a margin of 55.3 percent to 44.7 percent, a result which Mr Cameron said left him “blissfully happy”.

Two weeks after the Scottish referendum, Mr Cameron was forced to apologise after suggesting the Queen “purred down the phone” when she was told about the No result.

Mr Cameron’s admission will provoke anger from Scottish nationalists.

Pete Wishart, a Scottish National Party MP, said there was no doubt the Queen’s remarks had an impact on Scottish voters, particularly those who had not decided which way to vote.

He said: “We knew Cameron was up to something at the time and for him to explicitly chronicle how he approached it, almost strategically, is almost beyond belief.”

The first episode of The Cameron Years will be broadcast on BBC One at 9pm BST on Thursday, September 19.

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