Comment by c0m | Hacker News Reader

Comment by c0m | Hacker News Reader

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> The [monarch] doesn’t really have any power in practice

Entirely untrue. The monarch has a weekly meeting with the Prime Minister. There have been many cases of the Queen getting carveouts, influencing laws, and vetting bills. There is no law forbidding the monarch from not granting Royal Assent. This notion that the British monarch has no power is an absolute farce.

There’s also the whole concept of King’s Consent, wherein the King gets to vet every single bill for affect the crown's own prerogatives or interests, and negotiate secretly with the government to change the contents of that bill. The Guardian articles detail this process as well. If you seriously believe the King has no power in practice I have a bridge to sell you.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/King%27s_Consent

https://theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/07/revealed-queen-l...

https://theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/08/queen-lobbied-fo...

https://theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/jul/28/queen-secretly-l...

https://theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/jul/28/revealed-queen-v...

'There is no law forbidding the monarch from not granting Royal Assent'. True but I await the day that happens! The Brits don't go in for revolution but there'd be all hell to pay if this occurred. It would likely mark the beginning of the end for the House of Windsor. Anti-monarchists should hope such a thing comes to pass.

There's no need to speculate, the reason we say Parliament is sovereign is that Parliament ordered Charles I executed for defying them. The King is replaceable, status as Monarch of the United Kingdom is something its Parliament can bestow.

Turns out that people who hate fun (Puritans) are even less popular than a King who keeps starting wars, so Parliament installed a replacement King.

> There’s no need to speculate, the reason we say Parliament is sovereign is that Parliament ordered Charles I executed for defying them.

Refusal of Royal Assent has happened since then, and not caused similar responses, though (in England; parts of British North America are…a different story; no regicide of course, but the monarchy itself was replaced.)

Yup, the government absolutely can "advise" the monarch to do whatever they want as we saw in that other sub-thread. If the monarch refuses such "advice" they can be replaced, I doubt Parliament would go to all the extraordinary bother to execute a modern King, especially over such small beans - but if the King won't go they can either abolish the monarchy (it wouldn't even be that unpopular to do so right now) or just replace them anyway, passing a law which says actually no, that's not the King, this other person is monarch now.

Most recently Assent was withheld from a law passed in Scotland, on the advice of the British government. This conflict makes sense, the Scottish Parliament is necessarily subsidiary, and this was basically a Culture War law, in my opinion the Scottish were on the right side of history, but it's not astonishing that (as conceived when the Scottish Parliament was set up) the British parliament could say "No".

Before that the last time assent (as opposed to consent) was refused in 1708 is genuinely interesting. It was used because of unfortunate timing. Parliament said OK, those Scots seem useful, we don't fully trust them but we need more armed men and nobody doubts they can fight, so here's a law arming the Scottish. And then, with the Bill passed but Assent not yet granted, they received news of a French Fleet landing in Scotland. Suddenly giving arms to the Scottish seemed less clever as who knows if they'd be on France's side. So Mary was told (by the Government) to withhold Assent from that bill.

You should watch https://www.amazon.com/King-Charles-III-Rupert-Goold/dp/B071..., which examines this very premise. Surprisingly prophetic for a play originally first performed in 2014.

> True but I await the day that happens! The Brits don’t go in for revolution but there’d be all hell to pay if this occurred.

Probably not if, as was the case the last time it happened (in 1708), it was because of what was perceived as a radical change of relevant circumstance in between the law being passed and the expected date of royal assent.

(Of course, refusal of royal assent to colonial laws in North America did happen after that, without that reason, and did cause, or at least contribute to, a revolution in those colonies.)

Also the command-in-chief of UK and other Commonweath militaries?

Canada: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commander-in-Chief_of_the_Cana...

As all executive power is legally reposed in the Crown, the role of commander-in-chief is the only constitutional means by which decisions are made over the deployment and disposition of the Canadian Armed Forces.[6] Under the Westminster system's conventions of responsible government, the cabinet—which advises the sovereign or his viceroy on the exercise of the executive powers—generally exercises the Crown prerogative powers relating to the Canadian forces.[6][7] Still, all declarations of war are issued with the approval, and in the name, of the monarch and must be signed by either the sovereign or the governor general, as was done with the proclamation that declared Canada at war with Nazi Germany, issued on September 10, 1939; it stated: "Whereas by and with the advice of Our Privy Council for Canada, We have signified Our Approval for the issue of a Proclamation in the Canada Gazette declaring that a State of War with the German Reich exists and has existed in Our Dominion of Canada as and from the tenth day of September, 1939."

Australia: http://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/coaca4...

COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA CONSTITUTION ACT - SECT 68.

Command of naval and military forces.

The command in chief of the naval and military forces of the Commonwealth is vested in the Governor-General as the Queen's representative.

It’s concerning to think of some sort of major constitutional crisis taking place during wartime due to disagreement between PM and King. I’m a little baffled that this has never been framed as a national security issue, at least it hasn’t been a popular narrative in my lifetime.

At the same time, whatever government opens that particular Pandora’s box is in for a hell of a ride, so I understand why.

I'm obviously an abolitionist but I would be much less worried about this if the powers matched the role. I'm sure HN could empathise better than most websites that giving a supposed read-only user unused, powerful permissions is probably not the best idea.

Bare in mind that the other reason noone wants to open that Pandora's box is that in reality the monarchy's interference is relatively minor and the political establishment (with full backing of the public) would permanently shut down any attempts to interfere in a more major way.

That's not too say that the guardians findings aren't troubling or that the powers the UK monarchy do wield aren't antidemocratic. But they're only ignored because they're relatively minor.

In the case of something major like a national security incident they'd be overruled and potentially trigger the dissolution or atleast severe weakening of the monarchy. They're aware of that fact and thus careful about what they do.

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