London October 25 2022: Rishi Sunak is now the UK’s 57th prime minister after being invited to form a government by King Charles.
He is the third prime minister this year and will enter Downing Street as the youngest PM in two centuries.
The audience between King Charles and the new prime minister, Rishi Sunak, marks the symbolic handover of power, in a mix of ceremony and political pragmatism. It’s a ritual of continuity, against a backdrop of huge political turmoil.
This is one of the key constitutional roles of the King – and one that his mother took very seriously, so much so that despite her ill health she tenaciously carried out her final meeting with Liz Truss, when she became PM last month.
It’s called “kissing of hands” but it’s more likely to have been a bow and a handshake, in a meeting where the monarch formally asks the new PM to form a government. It’s the King’s first such inaugural meeting, so both men are still in new roles.
After a few official photographs at the beginning, this will have been a private meeting, setting a pattern for the confidential weekly audiences that are held between the King and PM.
The audience was in the 1844 Room in Buckingham Palace, one of the grander rooms for distinguished visitors, full of marble and gilt. The room is named after the date of the visit of a Russian tsar.
Reminders of the national and international challenges will be everywhere.
