The King is to revive the lost tradition of the monarch holding a formal meeting with the new leader of the opposition in a celebration of the importance of parliamentary scrutiny of government.
Kemi Badenoch will become the first Conservative opposition leader in 19 years to have a one-to-one audience with the monarch when she goes to Buckingham Palace on February 3.
David Cameron was the last opposition leader to be accorded a formal audience with the monarch after being elected to the role in 2006 but Queen Elizabeth dropped the practice after that. Palace officials have been unable to explain why.
David Cameron and Queen Elizabeth
JOHN STILLWELL/PA
They say the King has decided to revive the meeting as a one-off each time a new leader of the opposition is elected, while continuing with his weekly audiences with the prime minister. “It’s something that will happen now with each new leader of the opposition,” a senior royal aide said. “It’s because [Badenoch] is leader of His Majesty’s opposition.”
Senior Conservative party officials confirmed the meeting was going ahead. Another source said: “The King is keen to meet certain MPs from time to time.”
Charles, 76, has met Badenoch on several occasions, not least because she was a privy council member and a minister in Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak’s governments. She also briefly met him and Queen Camilla with Sir Keir Starmer at a reception for new MPs and peers last week.
In four and a half years as leader of the opposition, Jeremy Corbyn never had a one-to-one meeting with Elizabeth. When he and Jo Swinson, the Liberal Democrat leader at the time, wrote to her in August 2019 seeking an urgent meeting to prevent Boris Johnson suspending parliament to get him through a Brexit political crisis, Elizabeth refused. Aides said that she would only grant them an audience if Johnson agreed.
Charles and Camilla with Kemi Badenoch and Sir Keir Starmer during a reception for members of parliament newly elected in the 2024 election
GETTY IMAGES
Royal sources say any privy counsellor can ask to meet the monarch but where they are seeking to influence political decisions, the sovereign must then ask the permission of the prime minister.
Introductory audiences, however, are different and the Palace is adamant that the decision to hold one with an opposition leader does not need to be run past the government.