[SmileyJames]

The Queen doesn't have any real power really...??

Do I need a counter argument?

Clearly one of the most powerful people in the world. She controls the majority of British wealth and doesn't pay taxes on it because she owns a whole countries to embezzle it with

Her son just sold a chalet in Switzerland for millions so he could settle an international case

That's without getting into the good graces from the media

No power literally can't name a single person more powerful and less accountable to any laws

[easytiger]

> Clearly one of the most powerful people in the world. She controls the majority of British wealth and doesn't pay taxes on it because she owns a whole countries to embezzle it with

This is so wrong it is laughable. HN when discussing politics it seems is as big a cesspit as reddit.

There are real issues to be discussed here and its come to this.

> Do I need a counter argument?

She's been on the throne for a long time. Can you list the policies she has enacted into legislation that were not policies of the government of the day?

[matthewmacleod]

Look, I’ll absolutely be first to back scrapping the monarchy - but “she controls the majority of British wealth” is just objectively not true. We don’t have to make shit up in order to object to hereditary wealth and power.

[gorgoiler]

The office she holds exists under the same rules as Peel’s constabulary: they have power only because the people consent to it.

The moment the monarch overdoes it they’ll get their head chopped off (trad.)

[krona]

Imagine a world where politicians (or their descendants) couldn't abdicate except though untimely death? Arguably they would take their profession much more seriously, like a monarch.

[tialaramex]

British Members of Parliament are, in fact, notionally forbidden from resigning. There is deliberately no provision to "step down" as the representative. Historically there were cases where people probably did not want to be made MP.

Today, however, in practice you can resign. What happens is you tell the people who look after day-to-day business in the House, and they arrange for you to be offered a job by the Crown which you then accept. Obviously the people's elected representatives can't be the Monarch's employees, that's no sort of democracy -- and so this immediately terminates their membership of the Commons (fresh elections will be held some months in the future to replace them) and immediately the same offer can be re-used. The "jobs" given aren't real jobs, one that's used is Crown Steward and Bailiff of the three Chiltern Hundreds of Stoke, Desborough and Burnham. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiltern_Hundreds

Basically the wooded hills where I grew up were once bandit country and so the Crown used to pay somebody to sort out the bandits, the job still legally exists, but today the sort of bandits who live in those hills (bankers, executives, sometimes the Prime Minister himself) would need more than merely a "Crown Steward" to sort them out.

[foldr]

> She controls the majority of British wealth

No, she doesn’t.