In an annual ritual dating back hundreds of years, Britain’s monarch King Charles III on Wednesday (May 13, 2026) opened the current session of the U.K. Parliament by setting out the government’s agenda for the year ahead.
The affair involves an MP being taken hostage, ceremonially, and kept at Buckingham Palace to guarantee the monarch’s safety while he is in Westminster. However, it was British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s political safety that was in question – with more than a quarter of his MPs asking for his resignation on Tuesday (May 12, 2026), days after Labour sustained heavy losses in the local and regional elections across the U.K.
