[kergonath]

> It's not enshrined in some document they got together and wrote down like the US constitution

It’s also very brittle and one charismatic populist away from unraveling like the American government. Too much depends on gentlemen agreements and people trusting other people to do the right thing. It works in a stable environment, but shatters the moment someone with no shame and no scruples shows up.

[laughing_man]

There's really no way around the possibility that whatever you've written down in your constitution will be ignored in the heat of the moment, or become degraded over time.

[Jensson]

But you don't need to put the military under the direct command of the civilian president like US does, if parliament can take military action against the civilian president and civilian action against the military leader then they have ways to deal with both.

American president is too powerful to deal with since he controls both the civilian and the military side.

[marcus_holmes]

This is the one argument left for monarchy; that the military in the UK (and technically Australia) swear loyatly to the monarch, not the Prime Minister. In the event of an obviously-lunatic elected official ordering the troops into civilian areas to "pacify" civilian populations, the monarch could (in theory) countermand that order.

[r14c]

Isn't that worse? You don't even get to elect the commander in chief, its just some random guy who was born into it?

[ChocolateGod]

The monarch being Commander in Chief is ceremonial. Everything is done on the advice of the Prime Minister and their cabinet.

The chance of the monarch overriding said request is less than 1%.

Even then, parliament is sovereign. Whilst the logistics are complicated due to how things are introduced to the house, if parliament says no to a prime ministers decision, it overrides anything the prime minister who has no absolute power like a president does.

[laughing_man]

Monarchists can't have it both ways, though. Making him a ceremonial CiC isn't going to provide you with much of a bulwark against abuse of power by parliament. Or he isn't ceremonial and he could become a threat himself.

[marcus_holmes]

I didn't say it was a good argument ;)

Personally I love the idea that the codes for nukes are surgically implanted in a volunteer, and in order to issue the order to fire the nukes, the CIC must personally carve the codes from that person's chest with a knife, killing them in the process. Or the variant on that idea, that the codes are implanted in their own forearm, and to order the nukes they must cut the codes from out of their own flesh.

We could do the same for all military deployment orders.

[laughing_man]

There's a mechanism by which Congress can remove the president if he gets out of control.

[subscribed]

This just happened.

The government, unilaterally, against the country's prevalent feelings towards this illegal war of aggression, permitted USA to use British bases, and if I'm not mistaken, without as much as the parliament vote.

[hardlianotion]

Most western democracies have exactly the same fault, maybe having unscrupulous, shameless legislators are the end state of the current models of democracy being practiced.

[philistine]

While no democratic system is completely protected from tyrants, at least the UK (and the Commonwealth nations who inherited their principles) uses the living tree doctrine in its courts, which means that the written text is not sacrosanct and the intention and usage is to be considered. That and unwritten tradition has force of law and can be challenged in court. Look at Boris Johnson's reversal of his prorogation as an example.

[tshaddox]

> It’s also very brittle and one charismatic populist away from unraveling

All sufficiently large governments (really all organizations of any kind) are necessarily like this, from the most successful attempts at open societies to the most autocratic. They all require constant vigilance both to perform their intended function and to preserve themselves into the future.

[petesergeant]

Strong disagree. It's uncontested that supreme authority lies with parliament, not with the leader of the day. PM can't do shit if parliament doesn't want him to, because they can always simply change the rules on him.

[throwaway85825]

Constitution and laws are just pieces of paper. They only matter if the population acts as if they matter. Liberia has the same Constitution as the US.

[brailsafe]

But they're cycled through much more rapidly, and seem generally more vulnerable than the dictators in the U.S or otherwise. A small concession to be sure.

It seems like a fundamental failure of government that in many cases, there are no consequences for deliberately or accidentally screwing your people. You either get murdered eventually or the country is just left to fix itself later, which disproportionately affects people with little resources.

[charcircuit]

Being able to vote in a strong leader to fix things directly is a feature. Democracy is not always the answer and when it is it can be too slow when time matters.

[Someone]

For “fixing things” there are well-defined mechanisms such as state of emergency declaration of war.

Those give the leader extra powers, but do not give them carte blanche to do as they wish. Those extra powers are limited to handle specific problems.

[subscribed]

I think it's quite obvious now how this leads to the erosion of rights and laws, looking at the current state of the affairs.

[charcircuit]

That's the point? Adding laws and rights is not necessarily a good thing. People tried to work towards a local maxima but it turns out that the approach is no good so it needs to be torn down and another direction of hill climbing needs to be tried. Or circumstances where a law made sense are no longer the same. Problems that the law makers did not foresee may come into the picture.

[01jonny01]

Britain's problems are due to uncharismatic Blairite socialist.

[ordinaryradical]

This comment may or may not be wrong but it is quintessentially low effort.

The point of HN is to discuss, not to tweet about your political enemies.

[01jonny01]

I'm parroting back the opposite of the original reply, which was upvoted

That leaves me to conclude HN is a left leaning circle jerk echo chamber, much like reddit. With any dissent to the right triggering the non-hateful liberal lefties.

[kitd]

A populist far-right racist would fix all the potholes and bring HS2 in under budget? Got it.

[01jonny01]

You don't understand the core issue at heart in Britain.

The real distraction is the economic argument. The truth of the matter is natives feel like a stranger in their own country. I say this as someone who is mixed race and 2nd gen before you try and label me a racist. Yawn.

[kitd]

You need to change your social media algorithm.

[skibble]

All of them? Hmmm.

[b00ty4breakfast]

I don't know much about UK politics but I definitely know enough to know that there's no such thing as a "Blairite socialist".