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Comment by kaanski | Hacker News Reader

Personally I like having a politically neutral head of state as a personification of the country.

An elected head of state will be impossible to keep politically neutral and inevitably will polarise things.

Maybe a system with an appointed head of state instead of elected, similar to peerages in the House of Lords. Someone vetted and trusted, approved by an elected parliament.

Although the Monarchy is already completely controlled by parliament which is democratically elected so I’m not sure what the difference would be.

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This basically my position too. I think the concept of a stable and politically neutral head of state makes a lot of sense.

For me it's more the out dated ceremonies and the displays of wealth that I don't like. I think if the monarch just lived in a nice country house and deprecated silly things like the Crown Jewels and the Royal Carriage then I'd be completely fine with them.

I think it's the "royal" part of the monarchy that people oppose rather than the system itself.

Do you believe that the current monarchy is politically neutral?

The monarch has not exercised direct political power since the English Civil War.

Yes they’re wealthy and have exercised power that wealth gives you but they’d still be wealthy if they were not a monarch.

If we want to talk about the power that money brings you in politics then we’re having a different discussion, a discussion that is not UK specific.

But yes the monarchy as an institution has not involved itself in political matters in living memory, and has not exercised political power (executive orders, vetoing bills) in centuries.

Parliament is the sovereign political power in the UK. If they wanted to they could pass a bill today that dismantled the crown and the monarchy.

Direct political power is one thing, but indirect political power is very much another. The monarch gets briefed in advance on pretty much everything. Where there’s direct commercial impact to the crown’s businesses the laws are often changed to favour them.[1] There’s also a wide range of exceptions written into the UK’s legal system after direct political pressure specifically for the royal family.[2] This might be done in the shadows, but done it nevertheless is.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/ng-interactive/2015/may/...

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jul/14/queen-immuni...

I think if you assembled a list of elected MPs who have changed laws to suit them or lead directly to their profit (the PPE scandal, the recent scandal with Rishi Sunaks wife owning shares in a company the government officially endorsed, etc). You’d have a much longer list than the laws the crown has influenced.

I think if you made a list of how many laws and bills have been influenced by private lobbying and donations you’d have an inconceivably large list.

My point earlier is that the wealthy get their say, the monarchy as an institution hold the same amount of political power as the wealthy in the UK, but they do not hold direct political power.

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