Comment by scott_w
1 day ago
Just to be clear: Wallace is not a head of state, or even an MP any more. At one point, he was Secretary of State for Defence, a Cabinet position, however he resigned this in 2023.
This doesn’t justify his position (it’s stupid) but he doesn’t speak for the current government.
To clarify a bit further, the UK head of state is King Charles III, as he is for a bunch of other countries in the Commonwealth.
Head of state in the UK is a bit weird compared to countries that abolished or never had a monarchy.
Technically we did abolish the monarchy back in the 17th century, but the replacement was so bad we brought them back about 10 years later, which I think makes us a minority of one and even more weird.
Anyway, back on topic: this is a ridiculous law that is forcing services to erode their security while smart criminals can just use some nice free open-source software somewhere else for E2E communication. And a lot of this is definitely down to lawmakers not understanding technology.
You’re correct, however I gave GP the benefit of the doubt and assumed they meant Secretary of State ;-)
And, to be fair, while I’m generally a small r republican, I’m seeing benefits of having a non politically aligned head of state after J6. While the monarch has limited power, booting out a PM that can’t command the confidence of Parliament is one of them. The question of whether Johnson would accept being dethroned a la Trump was always silly given his consent was never needed.
The UK monarch's power is largely based on convention more than active decision making. For example, a government is formed at the invitation of the monarch, but that's long reflected the results of an election. Getting rid of a PM generally happens when they run out of luck. That sometimes coincides with the ruling party/coalition imploding. The next PM is then shortlisted by MPs and selected by a minority of the electorate.
I guess the US equivalent is the leader of the house being unable to hold their majority together. In some ways the presidential election feels more democratic if a relative outsider (like Trump was) can win. But a 2 year lead up is crazy.
> And, to be fair, while I’m generally a small r republican, I’m seeing benefits of having a non politically aligned head of state
One of the benefits of a constitutional monarchy is the head of state did not campaign for the position.
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The vast majority of democracies separated the roles of head of state and head of government.