this post was submitted on 04 Jan 2024
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Technically, sure. But, when was the last time the monarch flexed his/her muscles and used his/her power? There are rumours that in 2010 Elizabeth refused to allow another election. But, that barely counts. She didn't pick a winner, she didn't influence the election, she just said that she was just going to withhold her rubber stamp, to call another election. Then there's Australia in 1975 when the governor general (acting on behalf of the queen) fixed a deadlocked parliament by removing the PM, appointing his opponent, and requiring that an election be called immediately. Before that, you have to go back to Churchill being appointed as PM despite not being the leader of his party. But, again, that wasn't some task the monarch took on alone, he was advised by the whip, the PM, and various other people in top government spots.
IMO the current constitutional monarchies are basically republics with a safety valve. If the monarchs ever abuse their power, they know that the countries would happily switch over to a full republic. But, they can be tolerated, maybe even loved, if their only roles are ceremonial plus the occasional nudge to unstick the gears when they get jammed.
I just don't agree that having a monarch that is the head of a church can ever be accepted. Plus, the royals do vet many, many bills from the government and change them.. The monarchy also receives the inheritance from anyone that dies on "their" land without a will. And to top it all off, the Queen gained many, many exemptions to racial equality laws.
They have a lot more power than is often let on. And even if they didn't, what is the argument for having a useless bunch, including known paedos, get money from the tax payer just because they were born into a certain family? I can't make it make any kind of moral sense.
For the vetting of laws: "They included draft laws that affected the Queen’s personal property such as her private estates in Balmoral and Sandringham, and potentially anything deemed to affect her personally."
Besides, that's just them running the bills by her. Ultimately, it's parliament and the senate who decide on the laws. Once that's done she rubber stamps them.
Sure, the royals get a big income, and there are some old-fashioned laws that benefit them, or they're exempt from the rules others have to follow. But, these are small details that barely affect the lives of anybody living in the UK. I'm sure if you looked you'd find various carve-outs in US laws that benefit Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates, and they're not even technically in the US aristocracy.
The power to do what, for example?
Why change a working system? The money they receive from the UK taxpayers is tiny. They get less than £100m out of a budget of £1.2t. That's 0.008% of the budget, and you could argue that their presence probably roughly offsets that with the tourism money generated. Most of their income is the result of their massive wealth and land holdings. But, that makes them no different from the multi-billionaires in the US. It's not some magical sovereign thing that extracts money from the UK, it's inherited wealth, same thing that results in so many Waltons on the list of US billionaires.
Do you think it's massively different from the Walton family's wealth and power, or the Koch family's wealth and power, or Musk, Gates, Bezos, etc?
If you go back through the links I posted, it includes far more sweeping legislature vetting than what affected her personally. And also exempting people from non-dicrimination law because they have certain ancestory is weird, isn't it?
To stop people advancing in their career because of the colour of their skin. The power to take dead people's money if they don't have a will. The power to direct the army (the armed forces oaths are to the monarch, not the country or government - this was almost tested in planned coups in 1968 and 1974; both actively planned by King Charles' great-uncle and led to a "military exercise" that Downing Street weren't informed of as a warning to toe the Firm line).
Or how about a ban on police searching their properties for stolen goods? Or exemptions to green bills.
The royal family are like lobbyists on steroids and the idea that has no power is not correct.
This is patently false. £100m a year for FIVE PEOPLE (active royals) is by no means a small amount. This is the same as 3096 incomes for the average household in the UK, or 4467.7 nurses with five years experience.
Why do they deserve to get this money if not because it's their "divine right"? How is that not utterly fucked up?
And the "tourism" answer doesn't hold water. Both the Louvre and the Palace of Versailles, both former palaces, receives 50% more visitors than Buckingham Palace.
Please bear in mind that this is all for one family that have done absolutely nothing to earn it. How can we justify £100m a year (much of which ended up in the Panama and Paradise papers) for a single family? And that doesn't even take their net wealth into account.
Like the income of the people mentioned below is actually tiny, but their wealth is huge. About £20 BILLION huge. And all because of "divine rights". But of course, that's only an estimate because the royal family got the law changed so they never have to say how much they actually have (because they have the power to change laws, as mentioned above).
Absolutely agree. No one should be able to pass on this amount of wealth through a hereditary line. It just has no moral justification to give people money (and thus power) just for being born. That's why capitalists were nicknamed robber barons.