King Charles muttered “dear, oh dear” as he greeted Liz Truss at Buckingham Palace on Wednesday night.
The monarch was hosting the prime minister in one of the palace’s large reception rooms after an earlier meeting with the King and Queen of Malaysia.
A clip released by the Palace taken at the beginning of their weekly audience shows a pair of double doors opened by servants and Ms Truss being escorted inside by the King’s equerry.
As Ms Truss entered the reception room, the equerry announced her saying: “Prime minister, Your Majesty.”
Ms Truss steps forward to shake hands with the King, bowing as she does so.
“Your Majesty, great to see you again,” she says.
King Charles, smiling, replies: “Back again?”
To which Ms Truss responded: “Well, it’s a great pleasure.”
The King replies: “Dear, oh dear. Anyway.”
The meeting followed Ms Truss’s first PMQs since the mini-Budget, which sent the markets into mayhem after the pound reached a record low against the dollar. She insisted she would not cut public spending in the standoff with Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer.
It also comes after King Charles announced he would not attend Cop27 in Egypt next month following reports that Ms Truss objected to the monarch making an appearance at the international climate change summit.
While there was no official rebuttal, reports quoted palace and government sources as saying that King Charles made his decision after consultation with the prime minister and that any suggestion of disagreement was untrue.
Under the rules that govern Britain’s constitutional monarchy, the King is barred from interfering in politics. By convention, all official overseas visits by members of the royal family are undertaken in accordance with advice from the government and a decision like this would have resulted from consultation and agreement.
King Charles attended the previous climate summit, Cop26, last year in Glasgow but his attendance at this year’s conference was never confirmed. Cop27 is taking place 16-18 November in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.
