One smile at the wrong party leader and the monarch would be in trouble. So how can she exercise her duties without entering the fray? In Whitehall and Buckingham Palace alike, advisers are working to insulate her from what could be the most complex election for a generation

VE Day gave 19-year-old Lilibet one of the most carefree moments of her life. Princess Elizabeth, to give her her proper name, wore the cap of her Auxiliary Territorial Service uniform pulled low to protect her identity. And with an equerry and friends in tow, she danced the Lambeth Walk and the Hokey Cokey from Buckingham Palace to Park Lane, by way of Parliament Square.

Seventy years later, then, you might expect that the Queen would wish to mark the date of the night that the war formally ended in Europe for personal as well as patriotic reasons – perhaps staying close to the palace, where she stood on the balcony with her father George VI and Winston Churchill. But instead of taking part in the main commemorative events in London, she will be observing the anniversary in a smaller-scale celebration at Windsor. VE Day is, of course, 8 May – the day after the election. And as the prospect of a hung parliament, with all of the complications it will bring with it, looms into view, Buckingham Palace is desperate to ensure that the Queen be seen to be thoroughly out of the fray.

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“All you need is the one photograph where the Queen smiles at one of the leaders, which would prompt talk of: ‘Oh, the Queen is showing how she wants it to play out,’” said one Whitehall source familiar with the preparations. “No, no, no to that. They want to keep her quite separate.”

The members of the “golden triangle” of key advisers to the monarch and the government all agree that staying at Windsor is the wisest course, so that Elizabeth will be seen to be at a safe distance from possible negotiations on the formation of a new government. “When there is a chance that things may take a little longer than they have done in previous elections, it is right that the Queen is one step removed from the politics of it all, which is happening in London,” one palace source told the Guardian.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Princess Elizabeth (now the Queen), Queen Elizabeth (later the Queen Mother), King George VI and Princess Margaret on a balcony at Buckingham Palace in London during VE Day celebrations in 1945. Photograph: Popperfoto

The Queen’s absence from London during the VE Day anniversary weekend means that she will miss the main commemorative event, a service of remembrance at Westminster Abbey, which is due to be attended by the leaders of the main political parties. She will be represented by a senior royal such as the Prince of Wales.

That she should absent herself is one sign of just how the political times are changing, as the two main parties see their vote share fall – and of how careful plans need to be made, despite the model of 2010. For most of her reign, the Queen has been on hand at Buckingham Palace on the Friday after polling day to confirm or appoint the prime minister; only two of the 15 general elections in her 63-year reign have produced a hung parliament.

But in a move that was barely noticed at the time, the Queen discreetly based herself at Windsor Castle after the 2010 election, and sent the political leaders a quiet signal not to bother her until a credible prime minister had emerged. The palace source added: “It is the tradition now that after the general election the Queen is at Windsor until such a time as someone is able to form a new government. We expect that to be the same.”

The preparations by the “golden triangle” – cabinet secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood, the Queen’s private secretary, Sir Christopher Geidt, and the prime minister’s principal private secretary, Chris Martin – show how discreet work is underway as Whitehall gears up for a second successive hung parliament, which could prove still more complicated than the last one. A poll projection this week by Lord Ashcroft suggested that Labour and the Tories could even be tied on 272 seats apiece, creating more difficult parliamentary arithmetic that could see one of the main parties seeking to govern in a coalition or a looser arrangement with more than one other party – or even seeking to go it alone.

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Heywood and Martin will help to steer any coalition negotiations, and will also be on hand to advise David Cameron and Ed Miliband if either leader seeks to follow in the footsteps of Harold Wilson, who ran a minority administration for eight months after the February 1974 election. This is a government that could be defeated by the combined votes of the other parties in the House of Commons.

But one of the most important tasks of the “golden triangle” is to protect the Queen from political blowback during what can be a delicate moment for the monarch – the transfer of power from one prime minister to another. It would not be the first time she has found herself in such sensitive political waters. Consider 1963, when Harold Macmillan resigned a year before the 1964 general election. Conservative party leaders “emerged” from smoke-filled rooms in those days, which meant that the Queen came close to entering the political domain when, acting on the private advice of Macmillan, she called for Alec Douglas Home, thereby anointing him as both prime minister and leader of his party after Conservative grandees failed to reach a consensus.

Lord O’Donnell, who served as cabinet secretary at the time of the last coalition negotiations in 2010, believes that the Queen must be kept indisputably above the fray this time. Lord O’Donnell, who drew up guidelines in early 2010 with the monarch’s private secretary in anticipation of a hung parliament, told the Guardian: “We were very careful. The way Sir Christopher Geidt and I both looked at it was to say we wanted to keep the Queen above politics – not out of it, but above it. She has a constitutional role to play, but you don’t want anyone to be in a world where they might say afterwards: well, the Queen favoured this party or that party, or that particular type of solution rather than this solution.”

Peter Riddell, the director of the non-party Institute for Government, adds: “The two principles for all those involved in all this are: firstly, the Queen does not get involved – she is recipient of advice but not an active participant; and secondly, there must be continuity of government. You must always have a prime minister, apart from for the quarter of an hour it takes to go down the road to the palace.”

The Riddell principles were easy to uphold in 13 of the last 15 elections. But O’Donnell, in the classic style of a civil servant preparing for every contingency, moved to protect the Queen ahead of the expected hung parliament in 2010 by codifying an established, but unwritten, principle in his cabinet manual. This was that an incumbent prime minister should not resign until a clear successor has been identified.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Gordon Brown leaving Downing Street to tender his resignation to the Queen on 11 May 2010. He had remained prime minister for five days after losing the general election. Photograph: Oli Scarff/Getty

Constitutional experts believe that a precedent was established in 2010 – Gordon Brown remained as prime minister for five days after the election, despite presiding over Labour’s second-worst result since universal franchise. But there are calls led by Robert Hazell, professor of British politics and the constitution at UCL, to go further and declare that an incumbent prime minister faces a “duty” to remain in office until a clear successor emerges. “There is a duty on the incumbent prime minister to remain in office until it is clear who can command the confidence [of the commons],” Hazell says. “When he resigns he has got to be able to advise the Queen whom to appoint in his place.”

Brown, it will be remembered, did not initially remain in Downing Street after the election for entirely selfless reasons. He had hoped to form a coalition with the Liberal Democrats. But by the afternoon of Tuesday 11 May, by which time Brown had decided that Nick Clegg was not serious about the parallel coalition negotiations under way with Labour, the then prime minister determined that he should resign.

At 7.19pm Brown left Downing Street for the short journey to Buckingham Palace, where he resigned and recommended to the Queen that she should call for Cameron, even though the Tories had yet to finalise their coalition negotiations with the Lib Dems. When Cameron visited the palace he could only tell the Queen it was his intention to form a coalition with Clegg’s party.

Lord Adonis, the former transport secretary who was heavily involved in the Labour negotiations with the Lib Dems in 2010, insists that Brown fulfilled his constitutional obligation to remain in office until a clear successor had emerged. Adonis, who chronicled the period in his book 5 Days in May, says: “The point at which Gordon resigned, it was clear that Cameron could form a government. Precisely what that government was going to be wasn’t entirely clear.”

Adonis adds: “I believe 2010 has established a clear precedent. I think there is general agreement among the political leaders that they should, between them, agree what is going to happen and not bring the monarchy into political controversy.”

But this week’s Ashcroft poll suggests that the parliamentary arithmetic could be even more difficult this time, which would complicate matters for the palace. If the poll’s predictions came to pass, Cameron and Miliband would each need the support of a further 54 MPs to cross the magic threshold of 326 to secure a parliamentary majority of just one.

The only combination of parties that comes remotely near that, under the current polls, is a three-way combination involving Labour, the Lib Dems and the SNP. But a deal with the SNP may prove too politically toxic for Miliband, not least because the nationalists might have largely wiped out Labour north of the border by then.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The queen flanked by David Cameron and Nick Clegg, and the rest of the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition cabinet, in 2012. Photograph: Jeremy Selwyn/AFP/Getty

If an unstable coalition were formed – or if Cameron or Miliband sought and failed to run a one-party minority administration – a second general election could be triggered. But an early election can only be called outside the five-year cycle established in the fixed-term parliament act of 2011 if one of two conditions is met. These are: two-thirds of all MPs vote for an election, or the government loses a no-confidence vote, triggering a 14-day period after which the government, which could be formed by another party or parties, must win a confidence vote.

At its most extreme, this means that, in the space of a month, three limousines carrying three different prime ministers could make the journey down the Mall to see the Queen. A prime minister could resign after the election, a new one would be appointed, only to lose a confidence vote after the new parliament meets. If that prime minister fails to assemble the necessary votes in the 14-day period, he or she would then swallow their pride and advise the Queen to call the leader of the opposition – or a more popular figure in the sitting prime minister’s party – to form a government. If prime minister number three fails to win the confidence vote at the end of the 14-day period, a fresh election would be held.

O’Donnell thinks this is highly unlikely. “You’ve got 14 days, so you would try and come together. The ultimate point is that if none of these things work, there would be an election. Everyone will be trying to avoid that. You can come up with these completely impossible scenarios, but they seem to me highly unlikely.”

Geidt, the Queen’s ever-discreet private secretary, would come into his own in trying circumstances. Riddell says of his role in 2010: “Geidt was very active. His role was a kind of super-journalist: to find out what is going on … to find out the political mood and developments, and report this back to the Queen. It is very much a passive role … the Queen must not be involved in a partisan way in any shape or form. They are recipients of advice.” All agree that he will be in and out of Downing Street this time, too.

Knotty though it all is, O’Donnell is confident that the rules he laid down in 2010 will stand the test of time. “My principle in all of these things is a bit like the Vienna convention,” he says. “If you want to sort out the rules of war, do it in peacetime.”