For most prime ministers, their first audience with the monarch is a moment which will forever be etched in their minds and, for many, recorded in their memoirs.
As ever, protocol governs the meetings.
Once it is clear that there is an overall winner from the election, Buckingham Palace will alert the incoming premier to “stand by”.
On Friday courtiers have cleared two key slots in the King’s diary: 11am and midday.
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If Sir Keir Starmer is elected as prime minister, Rishi Sunak will be invited to Buckingham Palace first, arriving at 11am. In this meeting, the outgoing premier is invited to bring their spouse and their children for a “departure audience”.
Any sign of the privilege they once enjoyed in office is symbolically withdrawn shortly afterwards. While the outgoing leader may have arrived at the palace in a ministerial car, they must depart under their own steam and while they will be photographed going into the palace, they are expected to make a private exit away from the cameras.
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Then, providing voters elect a new prime minister, the incoming premier will be asked to come to the palace at midday.
This time, it is constitutional business. The incoming prime minister is invited to bring their spouse but not their children. Palace sources stress, however, that there is no requirement for the leader’s spouse to accept the offer. When Rishi Sunak first met the King as prime minister, for example, his wife, Akshata Murty, politely declined, preferring to stay out of the spotlight.
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On arrival at the palace, the new prime minister will be greeted at the sovereign’s entrance by Sir Clive Alderton, the King’s private secretary, and Lieutenant Commander Will Thornton of the Fleet Air Arm, the King’s equerry.
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Alderton, often described as the King’s right-hand man, has already had time to get to know Starmer after the pair were seated next to one another at last week’s state banquet for the Emperor and Empress of Japan.
The first official meeting between the King and his new prime minister is known as the “kissing of hands”, although in practical terms it is more likely to feature a bow, if a man, or curtsy, if a woman.
In his memoirs, Tony Blair recounts his first meeting with the late Queen following his 1997 election win. Queen Elizabeth told him: “You are my tenth prime minister. The first was Winston (Churchill). That was before you were born.” Rather than a kissing of hands, he tripped on the carpet and “practically fell upon the Queen’s hands, not so much brushing as enveloping them”.
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Gordon Brown described his first audience with Queen Elizabeth as “a congenial business-like conversation about the work that lay ahead”.
After the meeting with the King, courtiers have set aside a private room in the palace in which the new prime minister will be granted time to compose his thoughts and prepare a speech before returning to Downing Street to confirm that he has accepted the King’s invitation to form a government.
More often than not, a new prime minister’s first audience with the monarch is held at Buckingham Palace. In 2022, however, the late Queen, invited the outgoing premier Boris Johnson and the incoming prime minister Liz Truss to Balmoral Castle in Scotland. David Torrance, a clerk of the House of Commons library, noted a previous occasion of a prime ministerial appointment happening at Balmoral in 1885 when Lord Salisbury was “summoned hastily” by Queen Victoria and subsequently “accepted office” as prime minister.
Historically, HH Asquith is the only prime minister to be appointed outside the UK. In 1908 he took a boat and train to the Hôtel du Palais in Biarritz, France where King Edward VII was on holiday.
Nigel Fletcher, a political historian at King’s College London, added that Benjamin Disraeli “had to travel to the Isle of Wight to become prime minister in 1868, being summoned by Queen Victoria to kiss hands for the first time as her prime minister”.
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Once the first audience has taken place, an incoming prime minister is shown out via the “ministers’ staircase” and the King’s private secretary will now refer to the new leader as prime minister. The new premier will then travel out through the front gates of the palace in a ministerial car.
Sir Denis Thatcher recalled seeing the guards salute Baroness Thatcher as they left the palace following her election win in 1979.
If an incumbent prime minister, such as Sunak, wins an overall majority, as was the situation for David Cameron in 2015, they merely continue in office although custom nevertheless dictates that they would still seek an audience with the monarch.
For the victor of the 2024 general election, the weekly audience with the King will begin next Wednesday. In the meantime, there will be a meeting of the privy council and the official appointment of ministers.
The state opening of parliament is expected on July 17, the Queen’s 77th birthday.
