What Are The First Jobs Of A New Prime Minister?

Unless the opinion polls have got it extraordinarily wrong, Labour leader Keir Starmer will enter No10 on Friday as the new Prime Minister with a majority in the House of Commons — the first Labour leader to win a general election since 2005.

There are a certain number of set-piece moments that come with the changing of a Prime Minister. There are speeches to the nation on Downing Street — one from the outgoing PM and another from their successor — as well as trips to Buckingham Palace by both, to either offer their resignation to the monarch, in this case King Charles II, or be invited to form the next government. 

There will inevitably be photographs from the worlds’ press in front of the famous black door, but when the cameras on Downing Street have stopped flashing, what are the jobs at the top of the Prime Minister’s to-do list, in the hours after they secure the big job?

In the moments immediately after their speech on Downing Street, the Prime Minister will be faced with “a bit of ceremony,” Alex Thomas, the Institute for Government’s programme director on the civil service told PoliticsHome’s podcast The Rundown. 

Looking ahead to what Starmer could have to do, he said that there will be handshakes with his Principal Private Secretary, as well as the Cabinet Secretary who is the head of the civil service. 

After that, “it’s then traditional that Downing Street staff will clap in the Prime Minister,” said Thomas.

“There’s this slightly artificial, but actually quite nice tradition where all the civil servants who work in and around Downing Street welcome the Prime Minister, say ‘congratulations on your election victory’. 

“But then the serious business starts.” 

There will be walk-through of a number of protocols from the