Sorry-on a small phone screen and my quoting got messed up.
Eh, I don’t follow British media so have no idea which news sources are worth diving into (although I do have a subscription to The Guardian), just looked at the Google results page.
While he was speaking to the Australian Parliament today, Lidia Thorpe, an indigenous Australian senator and activist heckled him, “You are not our king. Give us our land back. Give us what you stole from us.” She was escorted out.
And later this week, he’s scheduled to go to Samoa for a Commonwealth meeting.
There are various forms of pancreatic cancer. It’s often bad but not always. To use a famous example, Ruth Bader Ginsburg had surgery for pancreatic cancer in 2009. It was caught early. She died in 2020 from something completely unrelated.
Let’s hope for the man’s sake the same holds true for him.
Which he has no authority to do. She should be heckling the Prime Minister and the Government leader in the Senate.
Her intent was to get attention to her cause, not to effect an immediate change.
The Version I Heard Was, a significant number of people voted against it because the “President” (who would replace the Governor-General) would not have any sort of veto power over bills passed in Parliament. I can’t even remember if the referendum called for the President to be elected by the people, as opposed to, say, appointed by the PM.
There seems to be a lot of ignorance about the role of the monarch in a constitutional monarchy, especially in Commonwealth countries that recognize the British monarch as their Head of State. They seem to think it confers tremendous power, but in fact in confers virtually nothing at all, since even the mostly symbolic duties of the Head of State are carried out by the country’s own Governor General, and the actual act of governing is carried out by the Prime Minister and his cabinet. I’m sure you remember when former leader of the Green Party Elizabeth May famously wrote to Queen Elizabeth asking her to intervene in what May perceived as a political scandal. What May got back was a polite lesson in civics and the Constitution. It was definitely a major embarrassment for May who should have known better than to make such a boneheaded move. These folks probably think that “Crown land” in Canada means land that King Charles can come over and build a shopping mall on, because it’s his. It isn’t.
As far as I can tell, the online mentions are on sites I’ve never heard of, and citing “leaks” and unnamed “sources”. None of the reputable British media sources (in which I 'd number the BBC, ITN and Sky of broadcast media, and of traditional print the Times, Guardian, Telegraph and Financial Times) mention it, and if even the Daily Mail isn’t covering it, I wouldn’t set any store by it.
I think those reputable sources would only cover it if something official is released; in other words, they don’t deal in speculation.
I agree that of the news sources @PatrickLondon mentioned that I recognize, the BBC, Times, and Guardian are reputable, but I don’t think your statement is generally correct. Reputable news sources can and do run speculative stories, provided the speculation is well-sourced and identified as unconfirmed, and sometimes simply run as opinion pieces. The Guardian, for instance, ran a purely speculative story a few years ago titled “Russia Collusion Inquiry Faces a Big 2018 — but Will Trump Let Mueller Finish the Job?”. There is nothing in its terms and conditions for submissions that bars such stories.
The difference between reputable news sources and disreputable ones like the Daily Mail (and back in the USA, Fox News) is that the disreputable ones not only often present speculation as fact, but frequently engage in sensationalist exaggeration and often present outright lies as fact when it suits their agenda.
Anyway, I think the bottom line here is that King Charles’s medical status is unknown beyond what has been released to the public. He may have a serious condition, or he may not. Apparently even the disreputable rags see no profit in making up lies about it, since it’s not a politically charged issue like climate change.
Betteridge’s Law of Headlines strikes again!
ISTM there are three aspects to confusing the power of the modern Crown.
One is whether or not the crown has any formal power to do stuff by fiat. We here all know it/they does not. I suspect all but imbeciles around the world for whom Charles is their King get that.
The second is whether the Crown can directly lobby, persuade, or force, the sitting government to do [whatever]. We know they cannot, and I think many, not all, subjects around the world get that too.
The last area is to me the most interesting …
The last aspect is whether the Crown has any effective bully pulpit to speak directly to the public about [whatever]. And thereby get the public to exert democratic influence on the political establishment. So a top-down request for bottom-up action. If and only if, the public is in the mood to actually care about [whatever] rather than ignore the bleatings of a silly old person.
The idea of the Crown as a non-self-interested “conscience” of the realm is not on its face crazy. Kinda like the Pope, the power if any, is only of moral suasion, not of money or force.
Now within the British tradition, the Crown speaking to the public like that is Simply Not Done. I don’t know if the few other titular crowns of Europe are equally hamstrung. It’s at least arguable that the “conscience” role, along with the “continuity” role, are the only legit 21st Century reasons to have a monarchy at all.
Untested waters. The monarch possibly might try it. Once.
Edward VIII is supposed to have said, on a visit to an impoverished mining district (while his marriage question was taking up time with the PM and there was excitable talk of a “King’s party” in Parliament) that “Something must be done”. But I don’t think anyone thought him serious and dedicated enough to turn it into any sort of campaign.
More uncertain is just what “nudging” might be going on in private between the monarch and the PM. We know there’s a procedure for asking early in the legislative process if anything in a proposed law directly affects the private interests of the monarch, which avoids public arguments later, but could be open to abuse. And the monarch can always say in private things like 'Are you sure that’s quite wise?" and “What about XYZ?”, plus of course Charles has had his causes, but publicly supports them as demonstration projects rather than political campaigns.
Openly seeking to pressure government, and particularly to disagree with the PM and Cabinet would only lead to one winner - and it wouldn’t be the monarch.
Which raises the question of whether we need humans to do it. Charles does have some duties: Opening parliament, signing documents, appointing (or really affirming) the prime minister.
Couldn’t all of these be done by a well-trained, cute dog? He could put his little paw prints on the document, bark to open parliament, and accept a treat from the PM-to-be-appointed.
I hereby propose replacing the monarch with a cute dog. Even with the best vet care in the world, it would probably cost a little less than the current monarchy, and there’d be no worries about Rex getting involved in politics.
Best of all, he (and his doggy relatives) could participate in celebrity culture without sacrificing their personal lives, and improve celebrity culture at the same time.
If you choose a King Charles Spaniel you won’t have to change most of the stationery.
I would disagree. There are the reserve powers of the Crown, where the monarch’s function is to keep the constitutional machinery of government working
We had two examples in Canada back in 2018 where the Queen’s representatives in two different provinces both exercised the reserve powers, when the electorate returned hung Parliaments.
In BC, the NDP and the Liberals both came a few seats short of a majority. There were two smaller parties, the Greens and another group.
The Liberal Premier went to the Lt Gov and said that she advised a new election right away, to resolve the deadlock. Implicit in her request was that she had not been able to form a government with a majority in the Assembly.
The Lt Gov exercised the reserve powers of the Crown, and refused the request for an immediate election. She said that the people had returned a divided House, and in light of the Liberals’ inability to form a majority gov’t, she considered it her duty to call on the leader of the NDP and invite him to form a gov’t. Only if the Liberals and NDP were both unable to form a government would she consider calling a new election right away.
So the Lt Gov called on the Leader of the Opposition, over the advice of the Premier, and the Leader of the Opposition confirmed he could form a gov’t. The Liberal leader resigned as Premier, and the Lt Gov appointed the NDP leader as Premier.
And no one was upset. That was a proper use of the Crown’s powers by the Crown’s representative, the Lt Gov, to explore all options before calling a new election, even though it meant refusing the advice from the Premier.
A similar hung Parliament occurred about the same time in New Brunswick. The Lt Gov’s actions there weren’t as dramatic, but she forced the Premier to put up or shut up in forming a government by giving him a strict time line. He wasn’t able to form gov’t, so she called on the Leader of the Opposition, who formed government.
ETA: Puppies couldn’t do that, not even Corgis with experience in the Royal Household. 
(Coincidentally, that premier was kicked out by the people of New Brunswick yesterday. His party lost the majority in yesterday’s election and the Premier and 5 of his Cabinet ministers lost their seats. Major electoral defeat.)
IIRC, the King can refuse to sign a bill. Of course, once Charles pulls that trick, Parliament will take that away. Charles could only do it if Parliament pleaded with him to do it as there was a huge mistake in some bill.
Maybe more, it all depends on how subtle the speech is.
American forget the Monarchy does a lot of good. First all all, the King takes a lot of Cerimonial stuff off the back of the PM- funerals, ribbon cutting and such. Our President spends a lot of time doing this. next of all the Monarchy brings in a LOT of Money into the UK. Something on the order of a billion pounds.
Good points.
IIRC, George V used that sort of soft power to get the House of Lords to pass a reform bill early in his reign.