I know they once had all the power, but is the parliamentary government in full control now, or can the royals actually affect politics, administration, and control over the country?
Edit: Thank all of you so much for taking the time to answer. This includes all of you with theories of power behind the curtains. It’s actually quite fascinating, and I am still combing through comments.
A very special thanks goes out to all the people that have “politely” corrected my use of the word, “England”. I would remind you that questions are for the point of learning. I appreciate your contribution.
In: Other
Well, all laws require the approval of the monarch, in the modern world they would never interfere with this directly or it’d be the end for them without a doubt. However, the King is kept updated on issues pertaining to the country in a weekly meeting with the Prime Minister, where the monarch is allowed to “Advise or Warn” the prime minister on the things they are briefed on. I don’t know quite how much sway this has, it probably depends on both the prime minister and the monarch. For example, I can imagine the Queen, given her age and perspective on public service probably was listened to in some way by prime ministers gone by, but I personally suspect Charles’ opinions are broadly ignored, especially when remember his very pro-Blair sentiments that were closed in some of his letters.
TL;DR, they effectively fill an advisory role.
No… *but*.
The fact that we are a monarchy really affects how our law works. Our prime minister has more power over our country than most people’s, because he or she is in theory directing the power of an absolute monarch. Our government’s ‘turning circle’ is very tight, we can respond very fast if we have to, because the things are actually being done by a Crown on Parliament’s advice.
So while the royals have no hard power (but huge soft power, they’re more like ‘what if the flag was a person’ than ‘what if the president was president for life’), the monarchy itself has a lot of power even before you figure that the PM has to chat with the monarch regularly and keep them posted on how the kingdom’s doing.
If this doesn’t sound very democratic, you’re very right. We are running a very old fashioned model of democracy and it has all kinds of problems with it.
As a minor correction, there is no English royalty. England stopped being a country in 1707 when it merged with Scotland to form the Kingdom of Great Britain. The English and Scottish monarchies also merged at that point. Then in 1801 that was replaced by the United Kingdom.
There are some interesting aspects of the various “Royal” elements, such as the military.
The British Army and Airforce swears direct name-dropped allegiance to the Sovereign (Charles at the moment)
Not to England, or the PM, or the government, Charles the Third personally, his heirs and successors, and any generals or officers appointed by him to command his armies.
This isn’t just a notional concept of the head of state being head of the armed forces, the armed forces follow the orders of a representative of the king in the form of the office of the PM, and the various Chief of Defence Staff, but ultimately their loyalty by oath is to the person of the Sovereign.
Hypothetically, if the Sovereign decided to exercise their power and started issuing direct orders to the military, they *are* the top of the chain of command, not just a figurehead with their position provided as courtesy to the head-of-state, and those orders would be entirely legal and have to be followed.
The Government (as established in the name of the Sovereign) does not have the authority to countermand those orders.
Basically if Charles turns around tomorrow and decides he’s had enough of backseat driving the nation, he would be perfectly within his authority and personal power to both disband the government, and command the military to back him up.
So the TLDR: it’s pretty much all delegated, but the actual wording of the authority is still very much derived from Royal Prerogative. If the King turns around and decides he’s done with it, he still very much has the legal standing to make it happen, and the military are oath-bound to follow him, which is probably the most crucial part of it. Everything else falls out of that.
The most important thing to understand is that the monarchy is not just a person with a title: it is an institution in the shape of a person. The institution and its established practices dictate how the person who occupies the position acts.
As others have indicated, there are very wide formal powers which are very rarely used practically; but I would personally argue that the fact that they haven’t been used recently doesn’t mean that they are simply vestigial, or that it is impossible that they won’t be used in the future. For example, the House of Commons has only passed a successful explicit vote of no confidence twice since 1900; but the ability of the House to do so is still a vital element of our constitution.
The extent to which a monarch can personally intervene in the major political sphere depends on the extent to which the political context of the day would allow the monarch to carry the day despite political opposition, hypothetically. To give an example: when Asquith resigned in 1916, George V made clear to the leading members of the Cabinet that he would not consent to a dissolution in wartime. This effectively ruled out any Tory becoming Prime Minister, as they would have been unable to commit to securing enough Liberal, Labour (or, indeed, Irish Nat) MPs to support them. Thus, the King ensured that Lloyd George would be the only feasible PM.
The fact that the monarch receives information on all important and sensitive aspects of government on a regular basis also makes a difference. Bagehot, the Victorian political commentator whose works are taught as a constitutional authority, wrote that the role of the modern monarch has three rights: “the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, the right to warn”. All those powers can be exercised more effectively by an experienced monarch who diligently takes in the information from government papers. Bagshot himself underestimated the extent to which Victoria could influence, if not unilaterally change, government policy, as this was not publicly well known until after her letters were posthumously published.
Executive authority in the UK stems from ‘The Crown’. This is where Parliament gets it’s authority from and can be seen as the “source” of governmental power and is the answer to the philosophical question “what gives you the right to rule?”
Now, “The Crown” is not the monarch. It is a separate political entity through which the Monarch exercises their executive power. However, only Parliament can tell The Crown how to exercise that power. The sitting monarch has ultimate executive authority as head of state, but can only exercise executive power with consent of Parliament. Now in theory, the sitting monarch has executive power beyond that dictated by Parliament, for example deployment of the armed forces, declaring war, signing (or refusing to sign) laws, but monarchs have never attempted to exercise that authority and most legal scholars agree that any attempt to do so would cause legal deadlock and break the entire system.
The UK system of government is like old software that’s been repeatedly patched and kind of works as it is but any attempt to go outside of it’s current parameters would cause the whole thing to fall apart. It could really do with a re-write, but that would cause so much political instability and chaos most people agree it wouldn’t be worth the trouble.
People here will likely mention King’s Consent, by which a stopgap exists to prevent the Royal Prerogative or the Crown Estate from being amended or whittled away by Parliament.
What they fail to mention is that a) it’s invoked by civil servants on very technical matters and b) is down to ministers to decide whether to uphold it or not – NOT the King.
I mean, we’ve had no shortage of ministers in power all over the UK, in the devolved administrations too, who would love to do nothing more than embarrass the Crown if it did something controversial.
It is a far, far less sinister aspect of our constitution than has been implied. Is it useful? Should it be reformed? Sure, probably. But not for the reasons people say.
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