[cyberpunk]

Meh, the Monarchy has no power it’s just a ceremonial position, and as for the lords yes the process of becoming one is not great (it is no longer hereditary however) but it actually is a bit useful these days and many in the upper house are genuinely experts on some aspects of policy and do provide some valuable input.

I don’t think you can really compare with the American system where you elect a de-facto king every 4 years...

[dane-pgp]

> Meh, the Monarchy has no power it’s just a ceremonial position

Even ignoring the secret veto that the Queen and Prince Charles continue to use against proposed legislation[0], the effect of the Monarchy (and the uncodified constitution) is that the Prime Minister of the day can effectively act as a monarch without the checks and balances that would exist in a republic.

> as for the lords yes the process of becoming one is not great (it is no longer hereditary however)

The House of Lords is the biggest parliamentary chamber of any democracy in the world (currently at 792 members), which is not a sign of how much expertise exists in it, but rather how easy it is for the government of the day to expand it with their cronies, who may then hardly ever turn up, except to vote to force through whatever legislation has passed in the Commons.

Also, it is incorrect to say it is "no longer hereditary" since there are, by law, 92 members who hold hereditary peerages.[1] Admittedly, the specific selection of these peers is subject to a vote (some elected by the House as a whole, though most are elected by only their fellow hereditary peers), but it is still an affront to democracy to have dozens of seats in a legislature which citizens are ineligible for due to their ancestry.

> I don’t think you can really compare with the American system where you elect a de-facto king every 4 years

You absolutely can compare it with the American system, and it compares badly, since the UK's de-facto king is elected only every 5 years, and they are chosen not by the people, but by the MPs, who on average were voted for by 37% of eligible voters at the last election.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/jan/14/secret-papers-roy...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Lords#Hereditary_peer...

[dastx]

> without the checks and balances that would exist in a republic.

As we've seen in the past 4 years, these checks and balances in a republic like the US can be completely invalidated without the relevant laws in place. Things like senate majority leader having the final say on what gets debated, or how a criminal trial is conducted (e.g. during Trump's impeachment).

Neither our current system works properly, nor does the US system, and I'm willing to bet this two party system is the bigger issue rather than having a monarch whose power is mostly ceremonial.

I will say, I was unaware of the what was layed out in the guardian article. I'd be curious how much this had happened since 2013.

[throw0101a]

> without the checks and balances that would exist in a republic.

The much vaunted checks and balances may have come to one dude in Michigan upholding democracy:

> The monstrous pressure that descended upon Van Langevelde is not easy to convey. He was one of two Republicans on the four-person board of state canvassers. Trump needed them both to sabotage the certification, and one had already signed on. State and national party leaders were broadcasting lies about fraud. The president and a parade of prominent Republicans had sent the message that Van Langevelde must follow along. He ducked their calls. He went off the grid. Observers in Lansing expected him to resign.

> He did not. On the afternoon of November 23, Van Langevelde showed up, pen in hand, for a public hearing. All 83 county authorities reported valid election results. Van Langevelde leaned forward to toggle on his mike, pulling down his face mask to speak. “The board’s duty today is very clear,” he said calmly. “We have a duty to certify this election based on the returns.”

[…]

> If Trump had suborned just that one man, Van Langevelde, the Michigan certification would have failed and the Republican legislature would have had an excuse to meddle. Van Langevelde was not a prominent party member—his day job was deputy counsel to the state House Republican Caucus—but he was thought to be a reliable one. All he really had to do was abstain, and the board would have been unable to certify the results.

* https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/01/how-clo...

See also Georgia:

> “If Brian Kemp had agreed to be completely lawless, he could have called in the state legislature and they could have tried to appoint a different slate of electors,” Richard Hasen, an election-law expert at UC Irvine, told me. “He could have refused to sign the certificate of the electors. I’ve never thought of Kemp as a voting-rights hero … but he was a hero here, stood up to tremendous pressure given the hold that Trump has over the Republican Party right now.”

* Ibid

I won't claim that a Westminster system is better, but I'm not sure how the US is something to use as an example (there may be theoretical ways it is better, but the implementation seems to suck).

[dan-robertson]

Yeah I really don’t understand the American comparison in this case. The monarch is unelected but basically powerless while in America the president wields the kinds of powers that the U.K. has removed from the monarch since the US was founded. And while the House of Lords suffers from a lot of issues (eg nominating party donors or stuffing the house,) they are far more constitutionally limited than the us senate which means we don’t get the kind of gridlock and inability to pass legislation that the US has.

[emteycz]

I don't think they're arguing against monarchy because of the ceremonial ruler. The problem seems to lie within the Prime Minister who essentially replaced the king. It's no longer hereditary, but the position seems to have very absolute powers and just a few checks/balances. That level of power is impossible to gather in European republics, they don't view the prime minister as a ruler, it's merely a manager of ministers who are each focused on managing one aspect of the state, also with very limited power, and each minister has a non-political counterpart who's actually in charge of running the ministry itself according to law.

[lotsofpulp]

How is the US president a king? Without the legislature, they can’t get any laws passed, and not even appoint people to important positions in the government. Both of the last 2 presidents were severely handicapped once they lost their party’s control of the legislature 2 years after being elected.

[cyberpunk]

Don’t executive orders bypass all of that? Isn’t that absolute power?

[skywhopper]

No, executive orders can only function in areas where Congress has delegated control to the Executive branch but not to a specific body. ie, setting details of employment policy for the federal government, or setting priorities for prosecution of crimes, or making decisions about how administrative policies happen. But the President can’t provision new funds, raise taxes, make decisions that have specific bodies set up for a regulatory purpose (FCC, SEC, Federal Reserve). A lot of what recent Presidents have done with executive orders could be rolled back by Congress if they chose.

[lotsofpulp]

No, they do not bypass all of it, or even much of it. Their limits are being stretched, and courts may decide that they’re being used improperly, but I don’t know of any big legal changes enacted by executive order.

But a president just tried to use all of the power in the executive branch to overturn an election. And he didn’t even come close. That doesn’t seem very king like to me.

[wil421]

No they can only issue things related to a law passed by Congress or a power granted to the executive branch by the Constitution. The Judicial branch can invalidate them.

[Symbiote]

Also the presidential pardons.

[lotsofpulp]

That is a huge power, but a president’s pardons are limited to federal crimes. State level charges still apply, and that doesn’t seem very king like. I also forgot to mention the previous president is about to go on trial in Congress starting Monday. Also far from what I would expect of a king.

A couple of US websites even banned the previous president while he was president, and he couldn’t do anything about it.