Boris Johnson refuses to reveal whether he apologised to Queen after Supreme Court defeat

The prime minister claimed there was a 'backlash' against his humiliating Supreme Court defeat

Boris Johnson has refused to reveal whether he apologised to the Queen over involving her in his unlawful decision to suspend parliament.

But he continued to challenge the validity of the Supreme Court finding that the five-week prorogation had no legal justification, describing the ruling of 11 of the UK’s most senior judges as “novel and peculiar”.

Downing Street has confirmed that the prime minister spoke by phone to Her Majesty following his humiliating Supreme Court defeat.

But Number 10 sources insisted they did not recognise a claim in the Sunday Times that the PM had personally apologised to the monarch for embarrassing her.

Asked by BBC1’s Andrew Marr whether he had said sorry, Mr Johnson replied: “I am, alas, forbidden from commenting on my conversations with Her Majesty… I’m not going to go into my conversations with Her Majesty.”

Mr Johnson suggested that there had been a “backlash” against Tuesday’s court ruling, which overturned a previous finding by the High Court that the prorogation was a political decision which did not fall into the remit of the law to decide.

The bombshell decision allowed MPs to return to parliament by nullifying the order issued in the Queen's name suspending sittings for five weeks in the run-up to the scheduled date of Brexit.

“I do think that the judgment was certainly novel and has raised very interesting constitutional questions, and those need to be thought through over quite a long time,” said the prime minister.

“I think that the judgment by the 11 justices was certainly novel and peculiar in the sense that they went against the Master of the Rolls and the Lord Chief Justice in extending the remit of the court into what was, I think, obviously a political question.

“The consequences of that decision are going to be working their way through for quite some time.

“You are now already starting to see a backlash, or people questioning the implications, of that decision.

“I humbly and sincerely accept it, but I note that when politicians were called back to debate Brexit, they didn’t really have much to say about the matter.”