Downing Street has said King Charles was not at risk of being dragged into politics after he took Keir Starmer and the Labour leader’s deputy on a tour of a housing project in Cornwall.
In a rare joint engagement between the monarch and political leaders, the trio visited Nansledan, a 120-hectare extension to the seaside town of Newquay, as a result of their shared interest in modern housing developments.
The Guardian understands the unusual visit follows discussions about housing, including when Labour was in opposition, between Charles and Starmer, as well as Angela Rayner, in which the project was mentioned.
The prime minister is said to have expressed an interest in seeing the development in person, and the king offered to show him and Rayner, who is also housing secretary, around the kind of community he believed should be created.
Government sources played down the timing of the event, which came before a major government announcement on housing this week. “We’ve actually gone to great efforts not to draw any link with the royal visit,” one said. “The king has long been passionate about this issue.”
Asked if making the trip days before the announcement risked the king being dragged into politics, Starmer’s official spokesperson replied: “No. Obviously, this project is entirely run by the palace and the Duchy [of Cornwall], but the government has spoken repeatedly on its ambitions on housebuilding.”
Palace sources said the king and prime minister had a shared interest in housing, which they had been discussing since Starmer was in opposition. They said the visit was a matter of “show not tell” and the timing was solely down to diaries, rather than linked to any official announcement.
A government source said the king wanted to “show off, in the nicest possible way”, the Cornish development.
Another said it was “absolutely critical” the public saw that new homes came with supporting infrastructure and public services, as in Nansledan, that would also help develop a sense of community.
The prime minister has set up a taskforce to create the next generation of towns as part of his drive to have 1.5m homes built before the next election.
The visit is believed to be the first time in recent history that a monarch has been accompanied by senior politicians on a joint engagement, focusing on a royal-inspired project. In 1998, he took John Prescott, then the deputy prime minister, on a tour of his Poundbury development in Dorset.
