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Comment by twoslide | Hacker News Reader

Interesting, does that mean that the Queen has implicitly agreed to a lot of controversial legislation (e.g. Internal Market Bill, and Brexit more generally), or the process of the proroguing parliament last year? It seems she might be a lot more conservative (lowercase) than many might like to think.

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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.

> The Royal Navy is the oldest of the three services, and it was established by the sovereign's prerogative. For that reason, recruits have never been required to swear allegiance, but they do sign an attestation or engagement form on entry. The same applies to the Royal Marines.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7289504.stm

I think they changed that recently- the first Navy veteran to be a Yeoman Warder ("Beefeater") at the Tower of London got the post in 2011, after the rules were changed to allow it.

David Allen Green (as usual) has a decent take on UK constitutional matters.

As for the Queen being a small c conservative, absolutely. British monarchy in this century is a badly run crime syndicate.

https://davidallengreen.com/2021/02/the-queens-consent-a-str...

It's called 'Royal Assent'.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_assent

Certain bills (e.g. financial) are by convention not blocked by the Lords and so once these final bill has been approved it is sent to the queen for her signature to put it in law.

The last time the Monarch refused to pass a law approved by Parliament was 1704

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/bbc_parliament/2327561...

The article is describing a different process than Royal assent

Royal Consent is a murkier and more dangerous concept than Royal Assent.

The day the queen refuses to assent to a bill against the will of parliament is the day the monarchy ends.

Probably. The same applies to other monarchies. King Baudouin of the Belgians famously asked parliament to declare him unable to govern for a day so that he didn’t have to sign a pro-abortion law (https://www.nytimes.com/1990/04/05/world/belgian-king-unable..., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baudouin_of_Belgium#Religious_...)

In my opinion? She would have consented to the final form of Brexit and the IMB.[1] I can't say about the process of proroguing Parliament, but I don't think she has the power to interfere in the running of Parliament. If she gave consent it was to the bill mandating Parliaments last no more than five years (which was a terrible plan) back when the Lib Dems and Tories allied.

Personally, I think that the best way to characterize the Queen is that she was liberal for the 1950s, but as times have changed and as she's changed she's become more conservative.

[1] EDIT: Because at the minimum they can be interpreted as affecting her finances.

So, I have a new link! And yes, she has agreed to a lot of controversial legislation, including Brexit!

This article has the thousand-plus laws she's been consulted on: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/08/royals-vette...

You may have missed this but at one point Johnson was actively touting the notion of proroguing parliament indefinitely so that it could not meet and reject a plan to Brexit without any trade deal in place.

And then 48 hours later, as if by magic, that plan (which would have required the Queen to publicly assent to an overtly-political variation of current norms) suddenly vanished without trace or comment.

Unfortunately this kind of proroguing has precedent in the Commonwealth since Stephen Harper (likely a friend of Boris) prorogued our (at the time minority gov't) parliament in 2008 to avoid an election that would have put a Liberal/NDP coalition in power.

Our governor general (and hence the monarchy) rubber stamped it then. I've never forgiven the institution.

The process discussed in the article (the Queen's consent, as opposed to the similarly named royal assent) applies only to legislation affecting "the hereditary revenues, the Duchy of Lancaster or the Duchy of Cornwall, and personal or property interests of the crown" - arguably Internal Market Bill and Brexit would be out of this scope.

The Duchy of Cornwall produces all kinds of goods which are exported to Europe. Brexit will definitely affect it.

In practice it's mostly ceremonial. It's not ceremonial in the way that she could do it and it would happen, but is in the way that AFAIK they haven't in centuries, and starting it outside very exceptional circumstances would mean that power would be taken away quickly.

As an example of an exceptional circumstance, in a Canada a few years back there was a minority government. The opposition parties banded together and formed a coalition with a plan to take over as a majority.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008%E2%80%932009_Canadian_p...

The Prime minister moved to keep power by requesting the Governor General (Queen's representative) prorogue parliament.

In this circumstance, the Governor General accepted the Prime Minister's request, which ended up rescuing the Conservative minority government. But I think most people agree that if she had decided otherwise, and allowed the majority coalition to take over, that would also have been an acceptable result. So this was, indirectly, the Queen making a ruling on a power struggle between a minority government and a majority opposition.

The Queen/GG were probably taking into account a very similar situation in Australia known as "The Dismissal" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Australian_constitutional...

Considering how controversial this is 50 years later I'd say they did a good job in Canada to be as apolitical as possible, because sacking a sitting Prime Minister is definitely picking a side.

The Governor General did what the Prime Minister asked her to do, which is what they always do. The GG does not act on the advice of parliament but rather on the advice of the Prime Minister.

If you presented an example where the Prime Minister told the Governor General to do one thing, and she did another, then I'd agree that counts as the Queen/GG exercising power.

The article I linked lists two such examples. More importantly, my point was that in this case, although the GG chose to do as asked, that was by no means a set outcome. If she had done otherwise, as happened in 1896 and 1926, that outcome would also have been considered reasonable, and most likely not resulted in a public outcry and overthrowing the monarchy.

I still think it was a bad call allowing Harper to get away with prorouging parliament twice and giving the cons time to paint a coalition government as somehow "unconstitutional" and "undemocratic".

It's MORE democratic if anything.

This is exactly what this article is about, turns out it's not uncommon, bills have been held up or changes added before assent was granted at the request of the monarchy over a thousand times in the present Queen's rein.

That's like 150 times a year? Every 2 days? How is that 'exceptional'?

I wouldn't be surprised if the Guardian has a week of damaging headline from this.

Today's was the Prince of Wales added an exemption shafting home owners on 'his' land, causing people's homes to become worthless so that he can collect extra rent. A clear abuse of power.

> I wouldn't be surprised if the Guardian has a week of damaging headline from this.

Indeed. Apparently they are releasing this as a series. I am very curious to see what they have next. Though I have no idea about how actually damaging this would be for the royal family.

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