King Charles III arrives at Parliament: What to expect?
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00:00King Charles and Queen Camilla. It's Queen Camilla's birthday today, she's 77
00:05years old so she'll be celebrating that. The King and the Queen have just emerged
00:09from the robing room where they have put on their robes and the King is wearing
00:13the crown which has 300 jewels in it. They're making their way towards the
00:19House of Lords where the King and Queen will take up their throne, their thrones
00:24and that will precede what will then be the reading of the King's Speech. Now the
00:32King's Speech is not something that is written by the King, it is written by the
00:37government and it's the government's way of outlining its reforms, what it intends
00:43to do over the next five-year legislature. But the King's Speech is
00:48something that you get every time there is a state opening of Parliament. This is
00:53the third time that King Charles has done this, the last time was for the
00:57Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and the time before that was when King
01:02Charles stood in for his mother Queen Elizabeth II who was too poorly at
01:08that point to be able to come and take part in the state opening of Parliament
01:13when he was accompanied at that time by Prince William. So the second official
01:19state opening of Parliament for King Charles II and Queen Camilla
01:23have now taken up their thrones in the House of Lords. Now we're going to wait
01:27until the MPs from the House of Commons which is just next to the House of Lords
01:32are then summoned in to the House of Lords to listen to the King's Speech and
01:39there will be a very special ceremony that takes place which is conducted by
01:44the Black Rod who will then have the door slammed in her face. This is
01:52something that goes back to the 17th century from the Civil War in the UK
01:57then she has to knock three times before the door is opened and the MPs from the
02:02House of Commons are allowed into the House of Lords. This is just to underline
02:05the separation of the governors of the UK and of the monarchy. Here we have the
02:15Black Rod. What does that mean exactly the Black Rod? The Black Rod is a part of
02:21the ceremonial process of the state opening of Parliament. She's called Sarah
02:27Clarke. She's been the Black Rod since 2018. She's the first female Black Rod in
02:32in 400 years. You're about to see the door will be slammed in her face in just
02:36a second. It's not very... oh dear. So she now will knock three times.
02:42The door will be opened and now they will let in the MPs from the House of Commons who will be
02:55admitted to the House of Lords for the reading of the King's Speech. This is the
02:59coming together of the House of Commons which is the democratically elected body
03:04in the UK, the House of Lords which is not democratically elected and the
03:09monarchy. So all three are reunited together for the King's Speech. Now one
03:14other thing which is interesting is that while this is taking place there is one
03:20MP who is taken hostage and kept in Buckingham Palace to make sure there is
03:25no, as they say in UK, skullduggery to try to kidnap the King. How do they decide who's
03:31taken hostage? And that once the King's Speech is over and the King has left the
03:36House of Lords, that MP will be set free from Buckingham Palace as a sort of
03:42exchange between the monarchy and the officially elected officials of the
03:48United Kingdom. It's incredible the ceremony. How do they decide
03:51something like that? Who gets to be taken hostage, do you know? I think there is a
03:55decision made within MPs about who would like to do that. It's just one person
04:02every year which is part of the ceremony. It's not the only ceremony that
04:06takes place. Remember there was the gunpowder plot in the UK in 1666 where
04:15Guy Fawkes tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament. Every time there is a King's
04:19Speech there is an inspection of the cellars of the House of Parliament to
04:24make sure there's no gunpowder or weapons there to cause trouble. Philip
04:27there we see Rishi Sunak, the outgoing British Prime Minister alongside
04:31Keir Starmer, the incoming Labour Prime Minister, looking quite chummy there.
04:34It's funny because depending on who is running the country, the relationship can
04:40either be friendly or unfriendly. I think this is the first time we've actually
04:44seen Keir Starmer since the Conservative Party lost the elections on the 4th of
04:50July. A reminder that Labour got a crushing victory in that election. 412
04:56seats out of the 650 seats in the Houses of Parliament. Only 121 seats for the
05:03Conservatives. So we're not sure how long Keir Starmer is going to be leader of
05:08the Conservative Party for. There's going to be a leadership challenge or
05:12leadership change. But certainly he and Keir Starmer seem to be getting on quite
05:16well. Keir Starmer of course is leader of the Labour Party. Compared to some of the earlier
05:19leaders like for example Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn. Jeremy Corbyn and
05:26Boris Johnson didn't really get on that well and when they're walking together
05:29for the Queen's speech back then, it looked a little bit painful the
05:33relationship between the two men.