Earlier quoted context omitted.
814 hereditary peers left, half barons.
Is that really a decline? How many were there in 1600?
The decline only started in the 20th century. It had been steadily increasing before that.
The Queen has more power over British law than we thought
271–280 of 599 posts
Re: The Queen has more power over British law than we thought
#272Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not going to try to answer the first, but as to the second question: Britain is exactly the example of this. The Queen (or King) is a symbol of national pride and unity. The British people regularly give her an approval rating of over 90%[1], which is astounding for someone who lives off of the public welfare. I happen to agree with the GP that monarchies should be abolished outright, but it is clear that people…
Given that the article claims she had reviewed more than 1000 laws, it’s hardly fair to call it public welfare.
My reading of the article is that it's supposed to be a reveal of something that most of the British public aren't aware of. Given that they aren't aware of it, it's probably safe to say that it doesn't factor into their estimation of her. In other words, she might as well have not reviewed more than 1000 laws, as far as the factors that go into her approval are concerned.
Re: The Queen has more power over British law than we thought
#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
"the monarchy should be abolished" This is such a no-brainer, and I really don't understand why anyone anywhere in the modern world would want someone to rule over them.
> I really don't understand why anyone anywhere in the modern world would want someone to rule over them. Almost everyone wants someone to rule over them, or at least over their neighbors.
Do they? The UK's representational democracy has major problems but it's [supposed to be] about having MPs who work for the people, not having rulers.
Do you want someone to rule over you?
Re: The Queen has more power over British law than we thought
#274Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Also, every member of the royal family should be stripped of their wealth and exiled. From a democratic/ideological perspective you might be right. On the other hand, having a royal family it cute -- doesn't that count for something :) I live in Denmark where we also pay the royal family some money, few privileges, etc.. My personal pocket philosophy is that the money we pay the royal family is the cost of a peacef…
It might be interesting to some that there is some possibility that QE2 isn't the rightful monarch anyhow. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Abney-Hastings,_14th...
Also, Michael Hastings isn't a descendant of Sophia of Hanover, which means his presumed claim would be invalidated by law anyway.
Re: The Queen has more power over British law than we thought
#275Parliament is sovereign. Consequently, the Queen has exactly as much power as Parliment allows. Sure, the Queen could decide to exercise her power outside of the constrained ways she currently does, but the very likely effect of that is a vote to strip her of her power.
Parliament is sovereign. This is always a fun start to any argument about the constitution of the UK. The thing is, you're building on a foundation that could potentially be challenged. As we discovered during the Brexit debates, people are happy to use words like "parliamentary sovereignty" when it suits their purposes, yet clearly many of them have never actually read Dicey , much less understood its entire argumen…
> And of course Dicey himself was not empowered with any special authority, but rather assembled a rational argument based primarily on historical precedent, which has subsequently been broadly accepted by figures in authority in the UK but is still, like everything else about our constitution, more a matter of convention than clear popular mandate.
Isn't that true of any such system? The US may have a written constitution, but that would be just a piece of paper if it weren't for the conventions surrounding it.
> Perhaps more importantly, if Parliament really is constitutionally sovereign, in the sense that its rules are supreme over all others and nothing a current parliament does can ever bind a future parliament, then we can never improve our system of government by adopting a formal written constitution, even if doing so would have overwhelming public support at the time. If you're going to make any argument about improving the constitution, starting from a foundation that necessarily precludes the single most important improvement that could be made might not be the best idea.
The statement is that Parliament is sovereign, not that Parliament necessarily ought to be sovereign. In practice I'm sure we could find a way to restrict the authority of parliament - the judiciary have already signalled some willingness to question the validity of laws if they undermine the integrity of parliament as a democratic body or basic human rights. But assuming we didn't, sure, we'd have to technically have a revolution, akin to the founding of the Fifth Republic in France. So what? Most countries have to redo their constitution every so often - it'd be very strange to expect a written constitution from hundreds of years ago to be appropriate for government today.
Re: The Queen has more power over British law than we thought
#276Earlier quoted context omitted.
"the monarchy should be abolished" This is such a no-brainer, and I really don't understand why anyone anywhere in the modern world would want someone to rule over them.
From a common sense perspective I agree with you. However I find it hard to reconcile it with the fact that many/most of the nicest countries on earth to live in are constitutional monarchies. Including Sweden, Denmark, Netherlands, Canada, Australia, UK, NZ and Japan. I don't know why this is, but it gives me pause in overthrowing the monarchy. It might be the existence of a monarch unites society in some way, or it…
Hmm.. might be "Survivorship bias"? The not-so-nice countries are more likely to remove their monarchies / nice are more likely to keep them?
Also, Japan and the UK were not exactly nice when their monarchs had absolute power...
Re: The Queen has more power over British law than we thought
#277Earlier quoted context omitted.
there's never a guarantee that anyone isn't corrupt, but switching from an opaque, land-owning monarchy to something like the German presidency which has the same function (mostly symbolic, but has some emergency powers), at least gives clear transparent procedures, is accountable to the public in formal ways, draws a regular salary, and isn't living off inherited wealth. What exactly is the justification for having…
Monarchy is superior to democracy in a very important way. When a monarch sends you off to die in war, the monarch is spending their own resources: you. And therefore the monarch's own wealth and power is at stake. In a democracy the president sends you off to die at no cost to themselves and only really strands to gain from the kickbacks.
> And therefore the monarch's own wealth and power is at stake.
They have a tolerance of how much resource can be wasted. President's kickback isn't worth anything when the resource wasted can actually cause problem for the nation(Only at this point the monarch will start paying attention). So i am pretty sure they both are similar in this context.
Re: The Queen has more power over British law than we thought
#278Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Queen’s job is to be above the fray of any particular moment’s politics and politicians. She represents the abstract institution of state, regardless of who is calling the shots today. In the same way that Americans can be loyal to America even if they hate the President... the British people have a specific human being to which they can feel the same loyalty.
> the British people have a specific human being to which they can feel the same loyalty In particular so do the British Armed Forces, who swear allegiance to the Crown [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Armed_Forces#Command_o...
I thought the Navy didn't. I recall something about how they weren't eligible for certain ceremonial roles that the army and RAF were due to never having sworn an oath to the crown.
Re: The Queen has more power over British law than we thought
#279Earlier quoted context omitted.
"the monarchy should be abolished" This is such a no-brainer, and I really don't understand why anyone anywhere in the modern world would want someone to rule over them.
About 40% of the public expresses authoritarian personality traits. From Wikipedia[1]: > The authoritarian personality is a personality type characterized by extreme obedience and unquestioning respect for and submission to the authority of a person external to the self, which is realized through the oppression of subordinate people [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authoritarian_personality
This is so wrong that it's basically offensive.
Considerably more so-called progressive folks (and others) put their faith in US Presidents they favour, than do subjects of most Monarchs, let alone the UK Monarch.
The level of demagoguery I witnessed around 2008 and 2016 in the US was ridiculous, people were spellbound as if their leaders were Disney characters brought to life.
Most Democratic Heads of State are elected on highly superficial and preformative presentations of themselves, effectively the result of giant PR and communications mechanations.
Other Heads of State - like Von der Leyen in the EU, have barely any democratic legitimacy.
QE2 has a narrow range of power, and she's actually done a pretty good job at it frankly, giving legitimacy to the notion that there is likely a lot that people can be brought up into. It's obviously not something that one would create from nothing in 2020, nor would anyone want more power bestowed than they have, but it works fine.
The US has Kim Kardashian and Donald Trump, the UK is stuck with QE2 and Will and Kate. I'd take the later if I could.
Re: The Queen has more power over British law than we thought
#280Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a model of monarchical disposal that has been successfully used by Germany, Greece and Romania. Letting them stay and keep all their vast wealth would risk allowing them continued influence. Also, the birth of the United Republic should involve a peaceful transfer of power, so doing this in the French style is completely out of the question.
I didn’t ask how it would work. I asked what the grounds for removal would be?
You need "grounds" to remove a monarch?!
What are their grounds for the power they currently wield??