Comment by TheOtherHobbes

The UK has a monarchy with severely curtailed official powers. But it's a front. The UK is effectively run by the Crown, and the aristocrats have huge land, property, and investment/financial empires, own all the main media outlets, and set policy through their clients in the political system.

The aristocrats are narcissistic, shockingly racist, and often rather stupid - good at tactics like manipulating elections and news cycles, but contemptuous of most of the population, and clueless about how to build an economy based on growth and invention instead of rent-seeking and extraction.