Comment by dgroshev
5 hours ago
Parliament is not in control of its own timetable, for one. Bit of a restriction on exercising its sovereignty, innit. And yes democracies can be chaotic.
It's entirely mad to me that I can make a list of easily verifiable, massively important examples of democratic processes in this country in the last few years and someone would just come up with a hypothetical like "but what if King kills someone" like it's somehow not just equal but has more weight than the list. Mad
> "but what if King kills someone"
Anne Boleyn, Catherine Howard would like a word.
What would the argument even be here? That the UK can never be a democracy because of what Henry VIII did in the 16th century?
No.
But processes that exist to preserve democracy that arent governed by that democracy are problematic. Saying the "king would never do..." when a king has makes the argument silly.
The UK is not alone in this - a great example is the filibuster in the us (a senate rule).
I'm sorry but someone claiming to have such an amazingly democratic government when they have a monarch who has absolute personal immunity from civil and criminal proceedings under UK law and whose face is on all the bank notes is a bit silly. This is the least democratic thing possible.
Queen Elizabeth used Queen's Consent many many times to prevent or modify laws she didn't like. An investigation by The Guardian revealed that more than 1,000 parliamentary bills were subjected to Queen's Consent or Prince's Consent during Queen Elizabeth II's reign.
The British government feels like a delicate standoff between Parliament and the crown.