I know that she’s just a figurehead, but does the monarch have ANY political power?
Theoretically yes, the final stage for any legislation is being given Royal Assent, at which point it becomes law…but it has long been given by the Speaker on behalf of the monarch, and the last time it was actually refused was by Queen Anne in 1707.
There’s an example of assent given in typical parliamentary proceedings here
I’ve heard that under certain circumstances she can throw out an elected PM and instate her own (if, for example, the opposition was more powerful than the government through coalitions and the like).
I don’t know how true this is, however.
Plus, she’s the queen of the UK, not just England.
john31584, welcome to the Straight Dope Message Board.
If you run a search, you will see that this topic has come up repeatedly, both in general and with regard to particular aspects of the Crown’s modern political role. For a general overview, you may be interested in visiting the Queen’s own website at The Monarchy Today. That website may help you frame a specific question that hasn’t been covered here before.
By the way, the queen’s realm is no longer England alone, so “queen of England” is an archaic title. The state of which the queen is the sovereign is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The queen is also the Head of the Commonwealth. Her titles and her status in respect of the Commonwealth have also been discussed at length in earlier threads. If you search on “queen” and “commonwealth,” you will probably find plenty of reading that will keep you busy for a while.
The Speaker does not actually give the royal assent, but rather announces to the House of Commons that the assent has been given. The assent is given by royal commissioners appointed for the purpose.
You can get more information straight from the horse’s mouth.
Basically, she has no useable political power at all.
The website that Tapioca Dextrin and I both just linked to may seem a little tough to navigate. If you go to The Queen’s Role in the Modern State, click the “Choose an option” menu, and you will get a drop-down menu that lists specific topics about the Crown’s modern political role.
Let’s not forget she is The Defender of the Faith. As an Episcopalian, let me say, gosh, I’m glad she’s there for me!
First, Anne Stuart was the last Queen of England (some will say Elizabeth Tudor, but the Stuarts were all Kings and Queens of England and of Scotland, separately, until 1707). Anne became the only Queen of Great Britain, and was succeeded by three Georges who were Kings of Great Britain, the third, and all his successors becoming Kings and Queens of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, “Northern” being inserted as the penultimate word in 1922. Elizabeth is in fact the Queen of England, but only in the sense that she’s Queen of Quebec or Queen of Queensland – the monarch of the nation of which that political unit is a part.
Second, Elizabeth retains quite a lot of potential power – the “Royal Prerogative” (Google for a list of prerogative powers), which she normally exercises only on the “advice” (courtesy for instructions) of her ministers, or, very rarely, of the Privy Council.
To give one excellent example, the Queen (or King) appoints the Prime Minister. For reasons inherent in how parliamentary government works, she is obliged to choose the P.M. from a list of men who can command a working majority in the House of Commons – which usually givers her Hobson’s choice. But in the case of a coalition government or with no clear party leader, she does in fact have a choice and has twice exercised it. In 1957, Sir Anthony Eden was compelled to resign by a combination of health problems and loss of support over Suez, and there was no clearcut leader of the Tories waiting in the wings. E2R conducted a survey of prominent Conservatives, depending heavily on the Earl of Salisbury, leader of the Tories in the House of Lords, and selected Harold Macmillan as the Tory with most support. Six years later, when the Profumo scandal brought Macmillan down, she did much the same, with a bit broader assessment of public views, and selected the Earl of Home, who resigned his peerage to take office as Sir Alec Douglas Home. In both cases there was no vote taken; she made her choice after determining that the candidate she chose would have the support to get a majority, but it was explicitly her choice.
An Aussie can explain the Whitlam affair of 1975, where the Governor General, acting in her behalf, changed the P.M. of Australia in a fairly controversial crisis.
The most valuable thing about the prerogative powers is that, while she exercises them on the advice of the men with political powers, she is in theory free to reject their advice. This creates a reservoir of power that can be used in crisis situations but not invoked simply on the whim of the guy with power.
Hence Churchill during WWII could assume near-dictatorial authority over all people, goods, and services in the U.K. as necessary to combat Hitler’s Germany – but the country is protected against coups d’etat by the fact that the leader with power cannot decree something by fiat – he must convince the monarch that she (or he) needs to make that decree – and the Windsors have historically taken very seriously their responsibility to the country to make the right decisions in such cases. (E.g., William IV’s and George V’s promises to create new peers when the Lords tried to interfere with Parliamentary reform desired by the country as a whole – which were the kings’ free decisions after careful thought and review of the national will.)
There are those who feel that H.M. Civil List is too much to pay for what the monarchy provides – but that it does have an important, albeit limited, political/Constitutional role to play, and one extremely difficult to assign to someone else, is a fact.
Since the lineage of royalty goes back to when the king of Scotland inherited the English throne, it would be more accurate to say that the Queen’s realm now includes England. It was never ‘England alone’.
There is, I suppose, some truth to this – but the Anglocentric POV held by most non-Celts looks at it that Henry VII’s elder daughter married the King of Scots and transmitted the inheritance of the English throne to his great-grandson when the Turors died off. James VI of Scots and I of England held both thrones independently, as did his son, grandsons, and great-grandson (who was independently Dutch Stadtholder) and great-granddaughters.
Surely you’re not suggesting that Elizabeth I was also queen of Scotland?
Futile Gesture, this argument makes sense only if you assume that the modern British monarchy can trace its “lineage” only as far back as the house of Stuart. True, not until the house of Stuart did the monarchy become British. But the monarchs themselves trace their lineage much further back – which is why the queen regnant is Elizabeth II and not Elizabeth I, and why William IV, Edward VII, and Edward VIII counted their regnal numbers from monarchs dating back to the ninth century.
The English monarch ruled England alone from Egbert (reigned 829-39) until Edward I, who defeated the house of Gwynedd in 1283 and brought Wales under English rule. The English ruling houses of Normandy, Blois, and Plantagenet ruled “England alone.” The houses of Plantagenet (from Edward I), Lancaster, York, and Tudor ruled England and Wales, but not Scotland. Not until James VI of Scotland inherited the English throne as James I did the notion of a British monarchy, encompassing both England and Scotland, take hold. Thus the title “king of England” or “queen of England” was the monarch’s appropriate title for a period of about 774 years.
brianmelendez, I think you’ve misread Polycarp’s post: he’s referring to Princess Margaret Tudor, the elder daughter of Henry VII, not Henry VIII.
Margaret married James IV, King of Scots from 1488 to 1513. Their son was James V, King of Scots from 1513 to 1542. Since Margaret was Henry VIII’s sister, that meant that James V was Elizabeth I’s first cousin.
James V was the father of Mary, Queen of Scots who reigned from 1542 until she fled to England in 1567. She was Elizabeth I’s first cousin once removed. Her son, James VI of Scotland succeeded Mary as Kings of Scots in 1567, and then succeeded cousin Elizabeth as King of England in 1603.
Source: History of the Monarchy - The Tudors, on the Royal Family’s website. There’s a complete family tree there, although it’s a PDF.
I was disagreeing only with Futile Gesture, not with Polycarp, whose post I had not yet read when I posted. (If you look back at my last post, you will see that I did not quote Polycarp, as your last post implies.) I was questioning both the statement that “the lineage of royalty goes back to when the king of Scotland inherited the English throne,” and the statement that “the Queen’s realm … was never ‘England alone.’” I chose Elizabeth I because she was the last monarch who ruled England but not Scotland. I could as easily have chosen Alfred or William I or any other pre-Tudor monarch.
You misunderstand.
My point was that it was not the monarch of England that became the monarch of Britain, it was the monarch of Scotland. At no point did a monarch only rule England, and then became monarch of Britain. So you could never say that their realm was no longer England alone. It was that King James VI’s realm now included England and no longer being Scotland alone.
As Polycarp accurately described it; I was challenging the inaccurate and Anglocentric point of view.
Oops. Sorry, brianmelendez.
Incidentally when the Queen selected Alec Douglas-Home (pronounced Douglas-HUME, just to annoy people) as Prime Minister, many people think if it HAD gone to a vote then R.A. “Rab” Butler would have won it, and many moderate Conservatives still refer to him as “the best Prime Minister we never had”.
Just to re-iterate: Calling Betty Windsor the “Queen of England” is like calling George Bush the “President of California”.
brianmelendez gahhhh gahhhh, ever heard of the act of union? it was then that the throne became “british” (if you must say that).
As a matter of fact, I might have heard something about the Act of Union. It’s why I wrote, “True, not until the house of Stuart did the monarchy become British.” What was your point?