The Queen had a public engagement where she toured Drummer Rigby's barracks eight days after he was murdered, and met privately with a number of his closest comrades during that tour.
You have to admit the “hijacking” of Britain by the Islamists is pretty astounding...Sharia Law recognized in Britain, really?
No, not really. Sharia law has not been recognised in Britain - that's a misrepresentation by some of the media. This is the current British government position on this issue, most recently restated in Parliament in May:
Sharia law has no jurisdiction under the law of England and Wales and the courts do not recognise it. There is no parallel court system in this country, and we have no intention of changing the position in any part of England and Wales.
I do understand the subtlety of what a Royal Assent involves but again, as a Colonialist, if you are the head of state, why not challenge the status quo? (Could this be the reason we countries are so dissimilar? I smell tea in the harbor!)
Because she's the Head of State of a Constitutional Monarchy, not an absolute monarchy or any other form of monarchy, but a constitutional monarchy. She has to follow the rules.
In 1776, when the American colonies rebelled against the monarchy, it did not have quite the same form it has today - some reform had occurred by that stage (in the late 1600s/early 1700s) but the Great Reform of the 1820s and 1830s, had not yet occurred. You've also set up a Constitution in the United States, which deliberately and explicitly gives your President a right to veto laws - and also sets in place a set of procedures that allows that veto to be overridden. The British constitution does not allow the Monarch to veto, except on express constitutional issues, and has no procedure to oppose a veto if one is made, except to remove the Monarch or abolish the Monarchy.
The Monarchy is the ultimate brake on a government acting illegally. In Britain, this has not happened in a long time - but in Australia, it has. In 1975 - so not that long ago - Gough Whitlam, the Prime Minister of the time, had lost control of the Australian Senate and so could not get a budget passed by Parliament. He was unable to govern, but he refused to do what he was supposed to do in such a situation which was call for a general election. Instead he proposed to continue to govern by forcing the Commonwealth Bank to give him money. The crisis was resolved when the Queen's representative in Australia, the Governor General, Sir John Kerr, used the powers of the Crown to remove him from office, and replace him with the Leader of the Opposition as Prime Minister (who immediately called for an election). Sir John Kerr could only do this because he was apolitical - not personally (he'd been a member of the Australian Labor Party as a younger man) but constitutionally.
Our current Governor-General, Quentin Bryce, is the mother-in-law of a government Minister (Bill Shorten, MP, Minister for Schools Education). When she was appointed, Shorten had not married her daughter, or she probably wouldn't have been appointed, but the point is, because we know and trust she will only act apolitically, the system continues to work.
Britain hasn't had to deal with a Prime Minister doing what he should - but after their last election, when they had a hung Parliament which has lead to the current coalition, initially Gordon Brown was trying to stay on as Prime Minister by forming his own coalition with Nick Clegg.
His final conversation with Nick Clegg as Prime Minister, reportedly included the following statement as to why he was now resigning:
Nick, Nick. I can't hold on any longer. Nick. I've got to go to the palace. The country expects me to do that. I have to go. The Queen expects me to go. I can't hold on any longer.
I do not know if the Queen had told him this or if he, understanding the constitutional situation as he should have, simply realised it, but it illustrates why the Queen's constitutional powers still matter. And why they must be preserved by the Monarch always acting constitutionally, and avoiding getting involved in non-constitutional political matters. When we have a constitutional crisis, we don't want a situation where the Monarch was abolished because it has intervened on other issues.
Its probably worth pointing out that the bill she refused to sign was a Scottish Militia Bill, and that she refused to sign it only on the advice of her own ministers, who feared, not without justification, that any militia formed would provide the backbone of any Jacobite rebel army that might arise in the future. It is interesting to speculate what would happen if her Government gave her similar advice in future in the face of the will of Parliament.
I always find your posts so interesting.
Thanks!
Ed