Posted on 07/25/2021 11:17:17 AM PDT by Mr. Mojo
Yes, when acting in her official capacity she must do what the Prime Minister and Cabinet decide.
The Crown’s reserve powers are limited and only for use in a crisis.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_power
There’s been a crisis ongoing for a few decades in my estimation. I certainly could not see the queen’s father giving assent to a nation-destroying abomination like the Abortion Act.
Way to go Czech Republic!!!
Don’t forget the Prague Spring in 1968!
The courts cannot compel parliament. They can compel the government, that is, the executive but the courts cannot rule an act of parliament to be illegal.
As for the monarchy, technically, the Queen has a lot of powers, but only parliament has the right to raise taxes so if the Queen started issuing royal decrees willy nilly she wouldn’t have any money to pay for it.
As a constitutional monarch, they have no choice. If the Queen started defying parliament, the United Kingdom would end up becoming the United Republic, as Charles I eventually discovered back in 1649.
Sounds like a great way to prevent too many cancelled Czechs.
The trouble is that the Queen doesn’t have any democratic mandate to veto a bill, except on the advice of her ministers (something that hasn’t happened since Queen Anne’s ministers instructed her to veto a Scottish Milita bill in 1708 for fear of it being hijacked by Jacobites). Even doing so on the advice of the Prime Minister and cabinet is very dubious, constitutionally speaking. I mean, in theory it could happen but the Queen isn’t going to defy Parliament because they are the ones with a mandate from the British people to govern, not her. If Parliament passes a crappy law the responsibility is Parliament’s, and by extension, the British electorate, not her.
According to what law?
So you’re saying there’s no remedy for a rogue parliament?
Constitutionally speaking, not really. The only real check on Parliament is that a present parliament cannot bind a future one, unfortunately, that also means that if Parliament enacted an act establishing a constitution by an Act of Parliament that limited Parliament’s power to enact laws that that constition said were ‘unconstitutional’ a future parliament could simply pass another act of parliament repealing that constitution.
We saw that with the Fixed Term Parliament Act 2011, which is supposed to require a 2/3 majority in the Commons rather than a simple majority in order to call an early election.
In 2019 the government passed another act called the Early Parliamentary Election Act 2019 which just required a simple majority and bypassed the fixed term parliament act.
However, on the other hand, since a parliament cannot bind a future one, bad laws can be quickly repealed by a future one, and a Prime Minister is unlikely to gain complete dictatorial power because he would still require majority support of MPs in order to abuse parliamentary power and it seems unlikely that a majority of MPs would just allow that.
On the other hand, the military owe their allegiance to the Queen, so if Parliament got completely out of hand I suppose the military could stop them, as long as there was popular support to stop a deranged parliament. It would have to happen quickly though, before they ran out of money to pay the soldiers, and the army’s right to exist only lasts for 5 years and then Parliament must pass a new Act confirming the standing army’s continued right to exist otherwise it must disband.
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