The UK election winner only becomes prime minister when King Charles III says so

LONDON (AP) — The Labour Party has won Britain’s general election, bringing a new party to power for the first time in 14 years. But Labour leader Keir Starmer didn't actually become prime minister until a carefully choreographed ceremony on Friday during which King Charles III formally asked him to form a new government.

It’s a moment that embodies the fact that, technically at least, the right to govern in the United Kingdom is still derived from royal authority, centuries after real political power was transferred to elected members of Parliament.

The process is swift, if somewhat brutal for departing prime ministers, like Rishi Sunak. Here's how ceremonial events unfold after an election.

While Britain is a constitutional monarchy where the king’s power is strictly limited by law and tradition, much of what happens here has echoes of the past. In this case, the process harkens back to a time when the king exercised supreme power and chose his preeminent minister — the prime minister — to run his government.

Today, the prime minister is the leader the party that holds a majority in the House of Commons, but technically he or she must still be offered the post by the monarch, said Anna Whitelock, professor of history of the monarchy at London’s City University.

“It reflects our historic past and it reflects the fact that we do have a constitutional monarchy, a parliamentary democracy, and the prime minister and the monarch therefore work hand in glove,’’ she said. “Both of them have a key role in the Constitution. And we see that enacted, on the day where a prime minister formally takes up his position.”

First, the outgoing prime minister — Sunak, in this case — goes to Buckingham Palace to offer his resignation to the king. Then the incoming one — Starmer — arrives for his first audience with Charles.

“There’s a tiny window where between the exiting prime minister, and officially the appointment of the new one, where technically power resides for those few minutes with the monarch,’’ Whitelock said. “So there’s a brief moment where there’s effectively a kind of vacuum in terms of parliamentary democracy. … But, of course, straight away there is that moment where the new prime minister is appointed.’’

That occurs when the prime minister-to-be sweeps into the palace for a ceremony known as the “Kissing of Hands,’’ though no kissing actually occurs. After the king asks the new prime minister to form a government, he bows and shakes Charles’ hand. A photo is snapped to record the moment power is transferred.

Though there’s no record of what is said between monarch and prime minister, dramatic activity swirls outside the palace gates. News helicopters followed Starmer's and Sunak’s cars to the palace. Commentators breathlessly record their progress and speculate about what’s being said behind closed doors.

Traditionally, the new prime minister then leaves the palace in a prime ministerial car and returns to Downing Street to make a statement, receiving the applause of staff members as he enters the famous black door of No. 10 and begins the business of government.

In Britain, the verdict of the voters is delivered swiftly.

After suffering a brutal defeat at the polls, Sunak was forced to vacate the prime minister’s official residence before Starmer's arrival just a few hours later.

Sunak was driven to the palace in a chauffeur-driven ministerial car. But after tendering his resignation, he left in a private vehicle.

The transition is so rapid that the moving van for the exiting leader is usually somewhere near the back door of Downing Street as the new leader takes his bow out front.

The whole royal choreography shows, if nothing else, that the monarchy remains a symbol of stability and continuity at a time when deep divisions in society are driving angry political debate. The king, who stands above the political fray, nonetheless runs the show — albeit ceremonially — and will continue to do so even after this prime minister is gone.

“Everyone will say, ‘Well, this is all the ceremonial bit,’ but it’s a really important part of the fact that governments can change in the U.K., and we don’t do riots,” said George Gross, a royal expert at King’s College London. “Maybe that didn’t need to be said before, but in the context of the current political world and geopolitics, I think that is really healthy.’’

In her 70-year reign, Queen Elizabeth II was served by 15 prime ministers. Charles, who has been on the throne for less than two years, is now greeting his third.

“This is the summit of power,” Gross said. “Ultimately the monarchy is the continuity and prime ministers come and go.”

The king holds weekly meetings with the prime minister to discuss government matters. While the monarch is politically neutral, he still has right to “advise and warn” the prime minister if he believes it’s necessary. These meetings are private and the matters discussed remain confidential.

The king will return to the public stage later this month for his next big royal event: the state opening of Parliament.

Traditionally, the monarch arrives in a horse-drawn carriage, sits on the Sovereign’s Throne in the House of Lords and wears the Imperial State Crown.

Then, during a joint meeting of House of Lords and the House of Commons, he will deliver a speech written for him by the incoming government to lay out its legislative program.

It’s a moment of pageantry, true. But it typifies the role of the monarchy in modern Britain.

This story has been updated to correct that Keir Starmer will be the third prime minister to serve during the King Charles III's reign, not the second.

Associated Press researcher Rhonda Shafner in New York contributed to this report.

Follow AP’s coverage of elections around the world: https://apnews.com/hub/global-elections/

FILE - Britain's King Charles III, center left, next to Queen Camilla, reads out a speech, written by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's government, outlining its legislative plans, during the State Opening of Parliament at the Houses of Parliament, in London, on Nov. 7, 2023. (Leon Neal/Pool Photo via AP, File)

FILE - Britain's King Charles III pauses during the State Opening of Parliament at the Palace of Westminster in London on Nov. 7, 2023. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant, Pool, File)

FILE - Outgoing British Prime Minister Boris Johnson speaks outside Downing Street in London, on Sept. 6, 2022, before heading to Balmoral in Scotland, where he will announce his resignation to Britain's Queen Elizabeth II. (Justin Tallis/Pool Photo via AP, File)

FILE - King Charles III, left, welcomes Rishi Sunak during an audience at Buckingham Palace in London, where he invited the newly elected leader of the Conservative Party to become prime minister and form a new government, Oct. 25, 2022. (Aaron Chown/Pool Photo via AP, file)

FILE - Britain's Queen Elizabeth II, left, welcomes Liz Truss during an audience at Balmoral, Scotland, where she invited the newly elected leader of the Conservative party to become prime minister and form a new government, on Sept. 6, 2022. (Jane Barlow/Pool Photo via AP, File)

FILE - Britain's Queen Elizabeth II welcomes newly elected leader of the Conservative party Boris Johnson during an audience at Buckingham Palace, London, on July 24, 2019, where she invited him to become prime minister and form a new government. (Victoria Jones/Pool via AP, File)

FILE - Removal vans line up at the rear of Downing Street after new Prime Minister Tony Blair replaced outgoing Conservative John Major, in London, on May 2 1997. (AP Photo/Jacqueline Arzt, File)

The motorcade carrying Britain's former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, leaves his former official residence at 10 Downing Street in central London, on May 11, 2010. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

FILE - Britain's new Prime Minister Tony Blair, smiles from the back of his official car as it leaves Buckingham Palace, central London, en route for Downing Street, on May 2, 1997. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant, File)

ASUNCIÓN, Paraguay (AP) — The most notable thing about the Mercosur trade bloc's meetings on Sunday in Paraguay was an absence — that of Argentine President Javier Milei.

With the Argentine populist skipping the summit to star at a right-wing rally in Brazil, South America's biggest trade bloc — politically divided, notoriously slow-moving and beset by backsliding — faces an uncertain future. Milei has advocated for pulling Argentina, a leader of the alliance, out of the agreement altogether.

Overseeing preparations for the presidential summit kicking off Monday after initial meetings, President Santiago Peña of Paraguay — the bloc's rotating chair — set low expectations for what would be accomplished.

“I hope that this summit we are going to hold on Monday will be an opportunity to reflect, at a time when Mercosur is clearly not going through its best moment,” Peña told journalists from Paraguay's capital of Asunción, where 33 years ago the presidents of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay signed the revolutionary free-trade treaty that soon became Mercosur.

In 1991, as countries across Latin America were shaking off military dictatorships and opening up to free-market ideas, the formation of Mercosur, a customs union of once-estranged neighbors, signaled a regional breakthrough that sent capital surging across borders.

But over recent decades, experts say, protectionism and political volatility have scuppered high hopes. The bloc has put up more barriers than it has broken down. The group's common external tariff is riddled with exceptions. Outside South America, the bloc has struck just two free trade deals, with Egypt and Israel.

The fact that the countries produce similar goods, mostly agricultural, hasn't helped matters. Trade within the bloc remains low, hovering around some 15% of its members' total commerce.

“These countries could be 5,000 miles apart and still do the trade that they’re doing at the moment,” said Christopher Ecclestone, a strategist with investment bank Hallgarten & Company. “It’s not the best idea for a free trade area if you’re all producing the same things at the same prices.”

Politically powerful industries in Brazil and Argentina, the continent’s two biggest economies, long have dominated deal-making in the bloc, stirring consternation among their smaller partners that increasingly feel shunted to the sidelines.

In 2021, the bloc hit a new low point when Uruguay announced that it would seek a deal with China outside the bloc. Mercosur's founding treaty forbade such bilateral agreements — extra sales for Uruguay would come at the expense of producers in Brazil and Argentina.

Uruguay’s president, Luis Lacalle Pou, who has staked his economic legacy on opening up to China, said Mercosur has held his country “hostage.”

Incensed over the breach of solidarity, Brazil announced it would pursue a broader trade deal with China on behalf of the bloc. But diplomats on Sunday reported no progress in those negotiations. Paraguay's strained ties with Beijing over its recognition of Taiwan complicates matters.

For the last 20 years, the bloc has also sought to finalize a free-trade agreement with the European Union to no avail. Argentines have criticized the draft deal as unfairly favoring Brazil. European countries, particularly France, have also opposed it.

“I’ll tell you, honestly, I don’t see the conditions for it,” President Peña said of a prospective deal.

Although there was some optimistic chatter in the conference room Sunday about future deals with the United Arab Emirates, South Korea and Japan, experts have warned that the bloc's reputation for torturous yearslong negotiations could throw cold water on things.

Now, President Milei’s shocking decision to skip the annual summit — and a critical chance to thaw relations with his ideological foe, left-wing Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva — has exacerbated internal discord. The last time an Argentine president bailed on a Mercosur meeting was in 2001, when then-President Fernando de la Rúa had the excuse of an unprecedented financial disaster.

Although libertarian President Milei advocates free trade, he has bashed Mercosur as “defective," a challenge to his free-market overhaul of Argentina’s spiraling economy.

Under his left-leaning Peronist predecessors — as left-wing political parties dominated other Latin American countries — Mercosur took on a political dimension, a sort of rival project to Washington's free trade agenda.

With Milei shattering that consensus, it remains unclear whether other countries will follow Argentina’s example. Uruguay holds presidential elections in October.

“This kind of attitude, previously from Brazil (under hard-right former President Jair Bolsonaro) and now from Argentina, weakens Mercosur as a whole,” said Juan Gabriel Tokatlian, professor of international relations at the University Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires.

Of Milei's absence, he added: “This is a serious problem.”

Argentina's top diplomat on Sunday chimed in during meetings with thinly veiled criticism, going so far as to raise the possibility of the bloc breaking apart.

“Argentina is promoting a new foreign economic policy, strategically focused on freedom,” Argentine Foreign Minister Diana Mondino told her counterparts in Paraguay. “If it's not possible to advance as Mercosur, let’s think about the possibility of having bilateral agreements."

Brazilian Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira shot back that he still places stock in regional cooperation to achieve prosperity. “We must work constantly and constructively to strengthen and not to diminish Mercosur's institutions," he said.

Even as critics call Mercosur a relic of the past, the bloc is growing for the first time in years. During Monday's summit, presidents will ratify Bolivia as the fifth full member of the alliance.

“It means being part of an important space for regional integration,” said socialist President Luis Arce of Bolivia ahead of his Paraguay visit, his first foreign trip since Bolivia’s alleged military coup attempt.

Claims by Milei that President Arce himself orchestrated the coup — which he repeated onstage before a cheering crowd in southern Brazil Sunday — have sparked a political firestorm.

Associated Press writers Isabel DeBre in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Gabriela Sá Pessoa in Sao Paulo, Brazil, contributed to this report.

Jaqueline Alexander walks outside her house to her daughter Nicole Brandel, in Kuna Pyapy Mbarete neighborhood on the outskirts of Asuncion, Paraguay, Saturday, July 6, 2024. The heads of state from South America's Mercosur trade bloc will gather in Asuncion on July 8. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

Sofia Maldonado, wearing a skirt in national colors, stands next to her father dressed as "Toro Kandil" for the San Juan festivities, in the Kuna Pyapy Mbarete neighborhood, on the outskirts of Asuncion, Paraguay, Saturday, July 6, 2024. The heads of state from South America's Mercosur trade bloc will gather in Asuncion on July 8. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

Foreign ministers attend a Mercosur Summit session at the Port building in Asuncion, Paraguay, Sunday, July 7, 2024. Heads of state from South America's Mercosur trade bloc will gather in Asuncion on July 8. (AP Photo/Jorge Saenz)

Brazil's Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira, center, attends a Mercosur summit session at the Port building in Asuncion, Paraguay, Sunday, July 7, 2024. Heads of state from South America's Mercosur trade bloc will gather in Asuncion on July 8. (AP Photo/Jorge Saenz)

Argentina's Foreign Minister Diana Mondino arrives at the Port building to attend a Mercosur summit in Asuncion, Paraguay, Sunday, July 7, 2024. Heads of state from South America's Mercosur trade bloc will gather in Asuncion on July 8. (AP Photo/Jorge Saenz)

Foreign ministers, front row, and staff pose for a photo ahead of a Mercosur summit at the Port building in Asuncion, Paraguay, Sunday, July 7, 2024. From left are Uruguay's Omar Paganini, Argentina's Diana Mondino, Paraguay's Ruben Ramirez, Brazil's Mauro Vieira and Bolivia's Celinda Sosa. (AP Photo/Jorge Saenz)