Liz doesn't have any real power, at least, no more than any other very rich old ladies.
This is too often misunderstood or perhaps even just deliberately misexplained on HN. For example, you will see people saying that Liz blocked the Military Action Against Iraq (Parliamentary Approval) Bill. Because hey, it says "Queen's Consent" so that means Liz had to authorize it right?
Nope. The power of Queen's Consent is operated on behalf of the government. Liz doesn't get to decide what "she" consents to. That Bill was blocked because the alternative was a (probably rather lively) parliamentary debate about Blair's [the Prime Minister at the time] enthusiasm for starting wars. He had the numbers, but this would embarrass him because it would have forced people who'd prefer to say they hate war, they wouldn't want a war, to admit yeah, of course they want to put troops in harm's way to further their careers. Queen's Consent isn't a matter for debate, so nobody had to be made uncomfortable.
If a non war-mongering government took up similar legislation, Liz wouldn't be like "Oh no, you can't take away my war starting powers" because they aren't her powers, they are government powers, and the government decides.
Remember, a predecessor of this Parliament executed the King for starting wars. Since that point it's clear that the Monarch's "powers" belong entirely to the Government, and the Government answers to Parliament. If you're wondering why you've got this nasty lying piece of shit in Number Ten, don't look to Liz, the people you sent to Westminster gave him that role and they could take it away today if a majority of them wanted to. You sent them there, that's democracy.
Queen's Consent happens in secret and is immune to parliamentary debate. You claim this is an advantage but it's actually a disadvantage. The Prime Minister is not a president and is not democratically elected by the entire country. He should not have the power to skip debate on embarrassing subjects.
Queen's Consent was used to give the Palace immunity to claims of race discrimination in their hiring. That's unconscionable. Nobody should be above the law.
The Parliament, and specifically the elected Commons, get to make the rules. If Blair didn't have a majority for even that decision to avoid debate he couldn't have done it †
This is why Theresa May couldn't get anything done, she didn't really have a majority for any actual policy. She needed the DUP (barely "allies" in any useful sense, even when substantially bribed to stay on side) and so even small rebellions in her own ranks meant she was constantly in danger of No Confidence.
It's uncomfortable to know that the majority of the people you sent, some of whom may have assured you personally that they agree with you, actually couldn't give a shit and are focused primarily on their own careers. But there it is.
† The Government controls the Crown powers, but Parliament's confidence in the Government is needed, any majority against the Government can get rid of it, with a single motion, "That This House Has No Confidence In Her Majesty's Government". This was not a realistic threat against Blair, or, sadly Boris, because for all the pantomimed outrage they're actually annoyingly popular - but it is why May couldn't get anything done.
Yeah, there was even a bizarre period prior to the last general election when the majority of the House of Commons was in fact opposed to Boris but didn't want to hold a confidence vote because they knew he'd win the resulting election (and couldn't find a majority of MPs who'd support any replacement). So instead they tried to puppet him around using their legislative powers whilst carefully avoiding the possibility of an election, which really isn't supposed to happen. All this was only possible due to the ill-advised Fixed Term Parliament Act, which made it impossible for the Prime Minister to force an election or make any vote on government policy into a confidence vote. This failed in its goal of stopping governments calling an early election in the hope of electoral gain, but did block an election when the current prime minister had lost the confidence of the house and the UK parliamentary system really needed one. The press avoided pointing out how much of a disastrous anti-democratic mess this whole thing was because it was helping the anti-Brexit side...
In order to form a British government you need a working majority in the House of Commons (the elected half of Parliament), this is because you need Confidence, as if a majority don't have Confidence in the government it can be dissolved.
The very least you can scrape by with in practice is called "Confidence and supply". An agreement between your political party and whatever other tiny parties or individual members can make up a simple majority (half plus one vote) of the Commons, to vote that they have Confidence in the government, and to vote through "Supply" bills, taxes and spending.
Parliament can choose to do whatever it wants, but as we see, in general the Parliament will be dominated by the governing party. So to an extent this is a distinction which makes no difference. Except, as Democrats are keenly aware in the US, just because somebody is a member of the Party doesn't magically mean they do whatever the executive led by that party says they should do...
So yes, in practice the UK Government and Parliament are much more cohesive than in the US where the Executive and Congress are run by completely different people with different agendas even on the rare occasions they're politically aligned, this is on purpose, but not by definition. If Johnson annoys enough "back bench" (ie elected politicians who aren't part of his executive) Tory MPs there's nothing he can do to ensure they vote how he wants and then he's probably fucked.
Clearly one of the most powerful people in the world. She controls the majority of British wealth and doesn't pay taxes on it because she owns a whole countries to embezzle it with
Her son just sold a chalet in Switzerland for millions so he could settle an international case
That's without getting into the good graces from the media
No power literally can't name a single person more powerful and less accountable to any laws
> Clearly one of the most powerful people in the world. She controls the majority of British wealth and doesn't pay taxes on it because she owns a whole countries to embezzle it with
This is so wrong it is laughable. HN when discussing politics it seems is as big a cesspit as reddit.
There are real issues to be discussed here and its come to this.
> Do I need a counter argument?
She's been on the throne for a long time. Can you list the policies she has enacted into legislation that were not policies of the government of the day?
Look, I’ll absolutely be first to back scrapping the monarchy - but “she controls the majority of British wealth” is just objectively not true. We don’t have to make shit up in order to object to hereditary wealth and power.
Imagine a world where politicians (or their descendants) couldn't abdicate except though untimely death? Arguably they would take their profession much more seriously, like a monarch.
British Members of Parliament are, in fact, notionally forbidden from resigning. There is deliberately no provision to "step down" as the representative. Historically there were cases where people probably did not want to be made MP.
Today, however, in practice you can resign. What happens is you tell the people who look after day-to-day business in the House, and they arrange for you to be offered a job by the Crown which you then accept. Obviously the people's elected representatives can't be the Monarch's employees, that's no sort of democracy -- and so this immediately terminates their membership of the Commons (fresh elections will be held some months in the future to replace them) and immediately the same offer can be re-used. The "jobs" given aren't real jobs, one that's used is Crown Steward and Bailiff of the three Chiltern Hundreds of Stoke, Desborough and Burnham. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiltern_Hundreds
Basically the wooded hills where I grew up were once bandit country and so the Crown used to pay somebody to sort out the bandits, the job still legally exists, but today the sort of bandits who live in those hills (bankers, executives, sometimes the Prime Minister himself) would need more than merely a "Crown Steward" to sort them out.
"Liz doesn't have any real power, at least, no more than any other very rich old ladies."
Technically you're right. However, I've seen first hand what the wielding of 'power and influence' looks like that comes from her position and institutions of the Monarchy.
It's very easy to dismiss her as just a bunch of money, but it's far more than that. Insiduously so, and is very representative of the culture of power in the UK.
Just as any CEO sets the culture of their organisation. So Monarchy sets the culture of the power in the UK. Take a small look at how the City of London works.
You may live in the UK and think she/they do not have any democrative power over you. But you'd be wrong in so much as the influence they have on 'democratic' and government institutions.
'Representative democracy' - where you vote for someone to represent you and thousands of others for years, over thousands of governance decisions - is not democracy. Even if we call it 'democracy'.
Representative democracy can be augmented by direct democracy though.
Switzerland for example has elected representatives who operate in a similar manner to other countries. The difference is that when the people have an issue with something the representatives did, they can trigger a referendum on the issue.
I think it's a good tradeoff between both systems.
I'd hate to see decisions delegated directly to the Great British Public in an endless series of referendums, though. For a start, I don't think I could stand to live in a state of endless political campaigning - it's bad enough reading the "culture war" nonsense in every paper now.
Secondly, within months, we'd have the immigrants deported, a statue of Maggie in every town square, transgender people made to wear badges with their birth sex and the BBC removed from the airwaves and replaced with a perpetual loop of the Nigel Farage show.
Yes, but also Scotland and Wales would be independent within *days*, so there's a strong upside. The south of England could be its own little corner of a declining empire, we can stick up a hard border around the whole sorry mess, and Scotland and the People's Democratic Republic of Yorkshire and Lancashire will, as always,just get on with the job.
Not entirely. Democracy isn't a fixed concept, and there are different interpretations of it. Direct democracy (via referenda) is fairly rare, and has clear flaws (look at the EU referendum!)
Equally, the Good Friday Agreement signed in Ireland in 1998 is an example of where an arguably good outcome arose from holding a referendum.
Clearly, referenda aren't "bad" in their own right, but they are a tool that should be employed when the circumstances are right.
If bending minorities to the will of majority is all the democracy is about then fuck that democracy. It becomes a tool of oppression driven by the worst masses could offer.
thankfully, in representative democracy we bend to the will of oligarchs represented by disposable sockpuppets whose campaigns they bankroll and retirement gigs they provide, instead of giving the unwashed masses of deplorable proles any say
"Direct" democracy or rule by public referendum goes against democracy, as it invariably results in a majoritarian democracy. While it may partly work in a small geography with a largely homogenous culture (like Switzerland) , it cannot work in India or US (and to a certain extent UK), that have multi-cultural society. In a multi-cultural society, one of the major tenets of democracy is that it guarantees the minorities certain rights that the majority swear to protect. There are many democratic decisions taken by good democrats that have proven unpopular in their times, but later hailed as visionary. A majoritarian democracy prevents this, and invariably turns democracy into rule by the mobs.
> While it may partly work in a small geography with a largely homogenous culture (like Switzerland)
Homogeneous as in 4 different language and cultural groups? Are you sure we're talking about the same Switzerland? Not to mention tons of migrants from all over Europe and the wider world?
The real problem with direct democracy is that most people are shortsighted. Governments often need to make long term decisions, like infrastructure, combat climate change, etc. and those are simply too big to be fully appreciated and grasped by your common voter - point in case, new "green" laws to reduce CO2 emissions were recently refused by referendum in Switzerland - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57457384
Frankly at this stage I'd welcome the queen just scrapping the whole lot of them.