Queen Elizabeth II has generally steered clear of the rancorous Brexit debate | Stephen Pond/Getty Images Plan to evacuate queen if Brexit goes bad There are no indications Whitehall’s emergency plans would involve relocating Queen Elizabeth II to the Continent.

If Britain crashes out of the EU and things go bad in London, Queen Elizabeth II will be ready to make her own exit — to an undisclosed location.

The U.K. government has repurposed Cold War emergency evacuation planning to prepare for the chance of violence and mayhem following a no-deal Brexit, and the need to protect the royal family, the Sunday Times and the Mail on Sunday reported.

Fears of Britain making a disorderly departure from the EU have spiked in recent days following a vote in the U.K. parliament demanding that Prime Minister Theresa May renegotiate the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement to change the backstop provision on the Northern Ireland border.

Neither May nor leaders in parliament have put forward a specific alternative proposal and EU negotiators insist that there is none because the issue was discussed exhaustively at the bargaining table. European leaders around the Continent and senior EU officials in Brussels have said there will be no renegotiation without a substantial shift in U.K. red lines.

It is unclear how seriously Whitehall officials are taking the prospect of a royal evacuation, which would presumably follow an outbreak of riots in London. But both the Times and the Mail said officials are worried about increasing efforts to draw the royal family into the intractable Brexit debate that continues to roil the country.

The queen has generally steered clear of the rancorous debate, though she did appear to weigh in, however subtly, in a recent speech in which she called for Britons to “seek out the common ground” and not lose sight of the “bigger picture.”

Among those who have called for royal intervention is hard-line Brexiter, Jacob Rees-Mogg, who urged the queen to suspend parliament if necessary to stop MPs seeking to delay Brexit. The Mail quoted Rees-Mogg as ridiculing those responsible for the evacuation plans. "The over-excited officials who have dreamt up this nonsense are clearly more students of fantasy than of history," he said.

The Times quoted an official describing the need for a royal evacuation as "extremely unlikely." But the prospect of the queen being rushed to safety in a secret operation now joins the list of worst-case Brexit fears alongside potential shortages of food and medicine.

“The decision to evacuate members of the royal family is based on whether or not their safety is compromised,” the official told the Times. “But right now we have no concern about their safety.”

However Brexit plays out, the renewed attention to Cold War evacuation plans, first drawn up because of fears of a Soviet nuclear attack, may prove useful given the unfolding collapse of the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty — the accord between Moscow and Washington that had long banned intermediate range weapons that most threatened Europe.

Citing alleged Russian violations of the treaty, U.S. President Donald Trump announced on Friday the U.S. would no longer be bound by it. Russian President Vladimir Putin, in quick reply, declared that Russia would develop new weapons with capabilities long prohibited under the INF.

The royal family's evacuation plan had originally involved an escape by yacht — perhaps with an initial cruise around northern Scottish islands. The Times reported that after the royal yacht Britannia was decommissioned in 1997, a subsequent plan called for using a cruise ship for a similar seaborne escape.

Another option would have involved secreting the royal family to one or more country homes.

There are no indications that Whitehall’s current emergency plan might involve relocating the queen to the Continent — presumably regarded as unfriendly terrain even if food and medicine are expected to remain plentiful. More plausibly, the royals could head to a Commonwealth territory, though certainly not Gibraltar, which has been a subject of dispute in the Brexit negotiations and could face its own turmoil in the event of a no-deal scenario.