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In contrast, an elected President has democratic legitimacy and we see over, and over, and over what happens is that a President takes the opportunity to try to seize power. It used to happen that I'd explain this and then Americans, who apparently don't study history, would object that obviously this would never happen with their President ...
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.You can’t expect to wield supreme executive power just because some watery tart threw a sword at you. I mean, if I went around saying I was an emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they’d put me away.
No scimitars lobbed by moistened bints though, he was just a bit mad in an era before they put people away.
And it's not like constitutional monarchs are risk-free, either: see, for example, the Shah of Iran in 1953.
The king has very limited power.
In practice, this power exists on the understanding that the King won't actually use it, but they are powers that he does have.
The power actually sits with "The Crown" not the King personally. "The Crown" is a legal entity that is represented by the King but not actually wielded by them. The Prime Minister advises the King on use of those powers which is what actually creates the legal conditions where they're effected by The Crown.
A good example of this is when Boris Johnson unlawfully prorogued parliament in 2019. The Supreme Court ruled that his advice to Queen Elizabeth to prorogue parliament was unlawful, and therefore "The Crown" could not have prorogued parliament and parliament was never prorogued. This would not be the case if it were a power that the Queen exercised themselves.
If the King were to attempt to dissolve parliament without advice from the PM by generating an order in council and sending it to Parliament then the supreme court would simply rule that he hadn't dissolved parliament.
The line of succession would be followed until an individual was found who was willing to support the democracy. This was proven in 1685.
They swear allegiance to the King (or Queen) — but it’s understood that a new King or Queen can be swapped in. The extremely stilted and socially restrained manner in which Queen Elizabeth (for example) behaves is because they entirely know that their family does not hold the nation hostage, it’s quite the opposite.
Our king (Netherlands) has 65% approval rating. In political leadership only Modi scores higher. King of Denmark has 94%. Norway 80-90%
Are you suggesting we get rid of kings day and work in stead? It would be worse than canceling easter. Imagine in 2025 we celebrate resurrection? Pretty funny if you think about it.
Why not just replace it with Labour Day? Or some kind of Independence Day - I bet we can come up with a reasonable start-of-country date.
The concept of a decorative politically-neutral head-of-state is solid, but we could just as well replace the king with an elected figure, like Germany has. Meanwhile, it would get rid of a filthy rich family constantly using their "god-given" connections to break the law and further enrich themselves.
Japan (which almost all anime lovers and software engineers on this site love going to) still has an emperor as their monarch.
They don't seem to have a problem with that and yet they still love it...for some reason.
I'm not responding to the obvious bait, as others have.