The article does a good job conflating the parliamentary process of Queen’s consent and lobbying of the government by the Royal family. You may think both are bad/outdated, I do, but there’s a lot of journalistic spin going on here.
Right at the bottom of the article there is a quote:
“Consent is always granted by the monarch where requested by government. Any assertion that the sovereign has blocked legislation is simply incorrect.”
The journalist never provides any evidence to the contrary.
But the quote does not address the question of whether the government felt that the sovereign were threatening to block legislation, if it were not modified in accordance with the Royal Family's wishes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyqnu6ywhR4).
They are in an odd spot of having extreme de jure power (Charles could disband parliament tomorrow) while having a completely unknown de facto power (would they listen? It didn't work out too well for another Charles).
King Baudouin of Belgium tried to exercise his power in the 90s by refusing to sign the abortion law, citing his catholic faith.
The law got signed in to effect anyway. The "trick" was that parliament can sign laws in to effect if the king is incapacitated. They declared him incapacitated, signed the law, and declared him "capable" again the next day. Whether that was truly legal and in accordance to the letter of the law was a matter of some debate (in my reading of the text, it's not), but I expect things will go in a similar fashion for the British monarchy if Charles really tries to use his "hard power" (rather than "soft power"/influence) in any way.
Keep in mind that king Baudouin requested himself for a solution where he would not have to sign the law without I obstructing the democratic process. So it is not fully true that they went against the will of the king.
It seems as if in Elizabeth's life (if "The Crown" has any bearing on real life events) she was able to wield some amount of de facto power either due to her reputation/prestige personally or from her role as monarch.
> Charles could disband parliament tomorrow
Elizabeth had some amount of real world power perhaps via the potential threat of this.
The queen says "tut tut" to the prime minister when the prime minister does something bad. That is not a role that you can underestimate. The queen reminds the prime minister that there is someone above them, and someone that they answer to. In comparison, a lot of US presidents seem like they need a few "tut tuts."
They answer to the people eventually, but while in office they wield powers unknown in our (British) system since the time of George III. And I mean that quite literally. The US president is essentially an elected British King circa 1789. They literally copied the constitutional role of the king point by point with a few minor alterations. The power to convene and dissolve parlia...er...congress, executive decrees are royal decrees, the veto on legislation, command of the armed forces, the power to pardon convicts, proroguation. Not exactly cutting edge constitutional innovation I'm afraid. We've moved on, but in some ways the US still stuck in the 18th Century.
>It does not convene and dissolve by presidential request.
And yet Article 2 Section 3 exists. Constitutional convention copy machine go Brrr. However I did exaggerate slightly for satirical effect. Maybe I should have just said "some alterations".
Yeah it's different, and worse IMHO. "The people" is an abstraction, like "God" or "Nature". The Queen is a real person that you have to go meet in her house, and bow to.
It’s completely different, that’s without a doubt. Whether or not a US President “answer[s] to the poeple” is debatable. W Bush taking the country to Iraq again, against a significant majority of the people comes to mind.
Like all American politicians the POTUS does ultimately answer to the people, but only in an indirect fashion. Directly, the POTUS answers to the States because the States are the ones who elect him.
Given that Dang has decided that exploring the negative aspects of monarchy are "ranting" and "malignant", it is hard to imagine how you could get an comprehensive assessment of the institution on HN. A curious person can probably find that sort of information elsewhere.
No, I said that about shallow-indignant internet comments, aka flamebait, which are what we don't want here. Thoughtful critique is a different matter—though the bar for "thoughtful" on this topic has to be pretty high, because it's so full of bombast and an internet forum is the worst genre for that.
I don't care about monarchism or anti-monarchism, nor would I ever take a position about anything like that in a moderation comment. The moderation comments are always about the same thing—avoiding tedious repetition (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32771818). The irony is how tediously repetitive they are!
