British monarchs have not been absolute rulers since what, the 12th century? And they have been powerless since the 17th century civil wars, effectively.
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This is more or less my perspective. I’m on the federal superstate end of the scale of EU integration, about as far as you can get. Ever closer union is a worthy goal to me. I believe that in a world with multiple superpowers we have to become one or be resigned to the dustbin of history.
But the UK can suck it. It’s always held the EU back when it comes to further integration with their island mentality. Frankly, brexit can be a good thing from my point of view. With those troublemakers out of the way perhaps we can get around to what the writers of the treaty of Rome had in mind originally, not this half baked not quite union we have now.
And if you want to return some time down the road, fine I guess. You go to the back of the line and don’t think you can avoid joining the euro this time.
That’s how I feel anyway, a minority opinion to be sure, but not as uncommon as you might think.
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semantics aside, what is the point of being queen if you have less freedom of speech than a peasant?
I can’t answer that. Constitutional monarchy has its benefits to the state, it provides a stability that elected heads of state seem to lack somewhat. My own country has a king, but one that’s been powerless since the constitution was amended in 1848 and these days does nothing beyond ceremonial work. Head of state, yes, but in name only. As to why, I don’t know, I wouldn’t want to be in their position.
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I think the stability seems to come more from the parlimentary system that dominates in places with figurehead monarchs, along with looser term limits for executives than we see in places like the US.
Basically since governments/adminstrations are built out of longer lived party structures, rather than by a single executive. You get a lot more continuity of government over time, less of a whip saw back and forth across the political spectrum than we see in the US. And that whole shadow government thing. Basically if the opposition party takes over they can already have government structure pre-set up, ready to go and up to date on what’s happening. With ministers on deck and everything. The opposition is more likely to know what they’re gonna do and how to do it. Then have an “oh shit how do we even staff up” moment.
All that’s good for long term planning and stability if nothing else.
The monarchs do seem to have an important impact. But it always looked to me as a diplomatic one. Both in terms of international relations. And in terms of smoothing internal dispute. And cultural stuff of course. National identity can be a powerful thing. But that sort of thing cuts both ways. Like imagine if the Queen was a hardcore brexiter, and didn’t have the scruples to avoid undermining British Democracy. The UK would be pretty screwed. Imagine if the pro-nazi British royals had had more pull. Instead of the ones who wanted to give inspiring speeches. We’d probably all be pretty fuck right now.
North Korea is very stable as well, undemocratic regimes tend to not change leadership as often since they don’t have to answer to anyone 
Not sure how it’s done elsewhere but the Dutch king can’t open his mouth in public without first asking the prime minister for permission.
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that sounds like it’s a violation of the European Convention on Human Rights. maybe the kings and queens of europe will organize a protest
*Peeks into thread…
Yeah… no.
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I did not say it be unlikely to lessen criminal or terrorist firearms violence", I said it would not eliminate it. The effects of such legislation can be hard to predict. It might even be that factors other than the civilian ownership of firearms are the primary drivers of gun violence.
But we’ve got toast! Sure, it’s only done on one side…
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The EU’s rules do, yes.
The problem is that the UK’s systems are not set up to allow those rules to be used.
For example, EU rules say that you can travel to another EU country to look for work and stay there for up to (I think) 3 months while you do. After that you theoretically can be required to leave.
That’s fine except the UK doesn’t track who comes in and leaves and doesn’t require people to register where they live like most other EU countries do.
So while we theoretically could insist citizens of other EU states leave after three months if they don’t have a job or are unable to support themselves from their own resources, in practice we can’t because we don’t have the administrative set up or resources (or frankly the desire) to do it.
We could make those arrangements but we’d have to apply them to UK citizens as well. I’ll just point to the attempted introduction of an identity card and the whole “Papers please!” tone of the discussion around that as an example of how well the idea of having to register your residence with the local police would go down.
Similar situations apply when it comes to benefits. We have lots of different kinds of benefits which we make available according to all sorts of different criteria.
Those which are means-tested, we could exclude most EU citizens from since they are required to have resources above the level of means-testing but we also have lots of non-means tested benefits and in-work benefits designed to prop up our low wage economy.
There are people who would love to remove those benefits from citizens of other EU countries but you can’t without changing the way they are applied to UK citizens as well. Basically you can’t say the Polish care worker is not entitled to child benefit but the British one whose circumstances are otherwise identical is.
You can cut benefits (and/or raise wages) for both but that’s politically unacceptable.
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Just in case you or any of our other fellow happy mutants are interested, here is the EU’s Advocate General’s opinion which argues that Article 50 can be halted unilaterally by the withdrawing state:
http://curia.europa.eu/juris/documents.jsf?num=C-621/18
First link goes to the press release summarising the opinion. Full text is reachable via the second link or from a teeny-tiny link at the bottom of the press release.
That doesn’t mean the ECJ will agree (they often don’t follow the AG’s recommendations) but it nicely sets out the argument.
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Well, it’s a job for life with a pretty good benefits package, for one thing.
For another, the position of the monarch is legally interesting because while convention dictates that she doesn’t, she could throw a massive fucking spanner into the works in case of serious problems. It would almost certainly lead to the outright abolition of the monarchy, but legally speaking she could get up to all sorts of shit to hamstring serious government malfeasance.
Apart from anything else, our armed forces swear their oath of loyalty directly to the sovereign, meaning that theoretically (not that it has ever been done in living memory or is likely to be done) a reigning monarch could oust (for example) a Prime Minister who attempted to subvert the democratic process by military force.
… assuming you trust in the personal integrity of the monarchy, of course. :-Þ
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I’d trust Elizabeth II over Theresa May any day and twice on Sundays.
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Your reply is an almost perfect illustration of why the whole “Immigrants! Vote leave!” thing is complete tosh.
The Tories in particular spent years promising to reduce immigration and did the square root of FA to do something sensible about managing our borders. T.May in particular carries a lot of responsibility here (as does the Treasury). When she says ‘there is no magic money tree’ I feel like boxing her ears until she realises there is also no magic border force. And as for the ‘take back control’ nonsense - we never really controlled our borders, as you point out, and it is entirely our own fault.
I was not so fully aware of the benefits (non-means tested) issue, so thanks for that. But as to ‘we don’t have the desire to do it’ - I sense the public mood might be all for it (only just, assuming views reflected the referendum vote) but only up until the public had it explained to them what it entailed.
I’m not certain that the benefit rules would have to apply to UK citizens as well in the way you say … and perhaps a quick bit of legislation might have resolved it… but even so, once the public learnt that it meant that there would need to be much stricter control of access to services (benefits, NHS, and so on) which would mean proof of citizenship much more often than at present - well it might not be so popular, as was the case with ID cards.
Nevertheless, we COULD have done it. It amazes me that sentient politicians did not consider that as our language is English, and it is the most widely spoken and taught second language throughout Europe, that if people moving country for economic benefit were going to go anywhere, they’d come here! Even without the infrastructure to enforce it, had we said we are going to take that position, making it clear that ‘them’s the rules’ would have discouraged a few from coming and would have enabled the govt to remove a few of those who were in contravention of those rules, if and when they were randomly/accidentally found.
Personally, in principle I’d like to see all benefits paid to people working full-time to be fully charged back to the employer, with an added administrative premium charged. Wages might rise as a result. It’s fraught with administrative risk (and cost) given how two employees on the same wage may have totally different circumstances meaning one does and one does not qualify for benefits, but something needs to be done about the state subsidising capitalism’s profits by supporting low wages.
Anyway, that’s’ a different topic - your reply just shed some light on this, too.
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They both go to church every Sunday. But probably not twice.
This looks a lot like a hard border bill to me
https://services.parliament.uk/bills/2017-19/counterterrorismandbordersecurity.html
Absolutely. Of course, it suited the Brexiters to keep the situation that way since it meant they could shout “We don’t even know how many are here!” at every opportunity.
Yup. All in favour of stronger controls on them. Not so much once it becomes clear that means more controls on us.
It could all have been altered to a system where we could have controlled these things fairly easily and perhaps the populace would have been ok with it.
No political party was however prepared to take the chance.
Certainly not when blaming the EU/EU migrants for anything not going quite as well as constituents might wish was working so well for everyone.
Perhaps, although it doesn’t seem to be working so well to curb illegal migrants. Although of course the actual numbers of those are tiny compared to the imaginary teeming hordes lining the coast of France…
As you say the reality of it is that so long as Britain has/had a nicely growing economy with an easily learnable/avoidable language and no real insistence on formal qualifications in most areas (where else in Europe can you rock up with no real qualifications, barely speaking the language and get a decent job almost immediately?), people were going to come here.
We, of course, wanted and needed them to come. Until we decided we didn’t want them.
Unfortunately, we still need them… which is a bit of a bummer that Brexiters are still trying to work round.
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On that point, while Calais has been teeming for years, I never saw any at the Western ports - until earlier this year. Now gendarmes and immigrants are highly visible on the approaches to the port at Caen-Ouistreham. What with the entirely predictable small boats in the channel in the past month or so (and I’m amazed it has taken this long for that development)… it is certainly getting ‘closer to home’ (i.e. more visible here) and getting worse. Although those at the Western ports are perhaps only there as a result of displacement from Calais since the crack-downs there. Who knows.
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