For out UK Dopers - Why doesn’t the Queen have a more active role in running the government? Royal Assent is a rubber stamp and I’m sure she doesn’t agree with every bill that’s passed. The Commons has evicerated
Please elaborate.
Hit the wrong button
For out UK Dopers - Why doesn’t the Queen have a more active role in running the government? Royal Assent is a rubber stamp and I’m sure she doesn’t agree with every bill that’s passed. The Commons has evicerated the power of the House of Lords through the Parliament Acts of 1911 with the help of Edward VII and later in 1949. Now there is a movement to make the House of Lords elected. If the Queen and Lords wanted to, could they get together and return the government to more traditional or old-fashioned style If they did, would there be a general uprising to abolish the monarchy?
My God, they’ve even eviscerated the OP!
Seriously, it’s a political matter. In many countries there were long struggles between various elements of society over who would have what power. In England, it was settled that the sovereign would have the symbolic supreme leadership with the understanding that the “people” via Parliament would have the majority of actual control of the government.
From a historical standpoint, the defining event was the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Parliament and King James II had been fighting over who ruled the country. Eventually, Parliament essentially fired James and replaced him with a new King and Queen. They succeded, which pretty much established who was really in charge.
Traditionally, the Lords had veto power over any bill passed by commons. But they also observed an unwritten tradition of not touching any financial or budgetary bills. There was very little trouble when the commons was conservative. Liberal commons were often much more scrutinized. In 1911, the commons used this to push through a bill giving themselves more power by making it part of a “financial” bill.
I’m working from poor memory here, though. I read about it in a book about the lead-up to WWI of all things: Dreadnought by Robert K. Massie.
Read up a lttle more:
in 1910, the Prime Minister, Mr. Asquith resolved to break the veto power of the Lords. He did this with the help of the King, Edward VII. The King threatened to create enough new peers in the House of Lords (up to 500!) to outvote the old aristocracy. Rather than let the King dilute the House of Lords with “upstart men of little consequence,” they passed the very liberal-minded “peoples budget” bill destroying their veto.
So what’s to stop Queen Elizabeth to use her veto power to control the Commons or appoint a PM to force an Act to give the Lords back their power?
She probably remembers what happened to Charles I 
Lack of a written Constitution is what happened.
But doesn’t the Lords have powers something like SCOTUS now? 
Why is the House of Commons so powerful?
Because they’re the Government of the country!
We want it that way. We may not have our freedoms written down but we have them.
Ultimatly the Queen doesn’t because she serves the will of the people and we don’t want that.
“The House of Lords”, is the highest United Kingdom appellate court in most matters, but the judicial power of the House of Lords is actually exercised by “The Judicial Committee of the House of Lords,” which consists of the Law Lords (also known as Lords of Appeal in Ordinary), who were appointed as judges to the House of Lords. In effect, it functions like a separately appointed highest court, and there are efforts underway to reform it into a separate Supreme Court.
Nearly right, it was 1911 and King George V
Their ‘veto’ was turned into the ability to delay acts, which was (according to This Sceptered Isle) one of the most significant changes to the British Constitution in the 20th Century … until Blair.
Actually it was quite a sensible move as it turned the Lords into a review and delay House rather than a direct rival of the Commons.
To be honest, they were probably more worried about overcrowding the dining and toilet facilities than ‘upstart men of little consequence’ 
We have our freedoms now but the EU will soon put a stop to that…give 'em enough time
The United States government was constructed on a basis of achieving consensus and compromise between conflicting powers through checks and balances. It was done this because the oppression on the Colonies of the unified system of Britain under George III and Lord North was a vivid memory to all the men who gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 to write the Constitution.
By contrast, the British system is one devised to arrive at a consensus through compromise between cooperating powers. Elizabeth II actually does have a fair amount of power, but nobody outside a select few individuals will ever see her use it. While the legal fiction is that the Ministry and Parliament “advise” her what to enact, the truth of the matter is that she advises them – she’s the one person who has been an integral part of the British Government since Stalin and Truman were in charge elsewhere. There’s an old saying that “the Queen can do whatever she wants … once.” Like the “must sign her own death warrant” comment, it’s an exaggeration of a valid truth. By the time a law reaches the light of day, even to be debated on the floor of Commons and reported in Hansard, a lot of things have happened – the first draft, extreme and with flaws, lies in shreds in a wastebin. Committees both Ministerial and Parliamentary have reviewed it; the leading Ministers have had their opportunity to “spice it to taste”; the Queen has had a look at it and what she has to say been taken seriously; and presumably several other steps.
The Commons is all-powerful because they are the sole body chosen by the people. They in turn choose the Ministry, although officially the Queen appoints it. The check on them is the five-year maximum on Parliaments and the Royal Prerogative to dissolve Parliament on the advice of her P.M. And even these things are flexible if circumstances call for it. The Commons that celebrated the surrender of Nazi Germany in 1945 was elected in the heart of the Depression in 1935. The Queen may refuse a dissolution if it seems to her the will of the people are against an immediate election. And so on. Innovation, cooperation, and compromise are the hallmarks of the British system – and it’s as alien to X-or-Y dichotomous American political taste as would be the intricacies of the Byzantine Empire or the Mongol Khanate.
Bollocks - some British people living in the USA did not like paying taxes to pay for a standing army to deter the French in the USA
As it happens, the USA Constitution was pretty good - given the George Washington would not do a Cromwell you landed up with a pretty viable ‘political setup’ - but it is a modified clone of the UK constitution.
The only thing Elizabeth II can do is personally and privately humilliate the Prime Minister (for example it is rumoured that Margaret Thatcher was not allowed to sit down during audiences, which I consider unlikely)
The Commons does not chose the ‘Ministry’ - for a start there is no ‘Ministry’ - the Prime Minister appoints Ministers.
I think that you should do a bit of revision Polycarp you have just got things wrong - politically the Monarchy is irrelevant
- however a spectularly good idea might be a USA subscription for a new Royal Yacht
Polycarp is using the term “ministry” to refer to the collective group of ministers under a particular Prime Minister. It’s not used in that sense as much as formerly, but it’s still a correct usage of the term. (Nowadays, it’s more common to use the term “government” - the “Blair government”, the “Thatcher government”.)
See Wiki’s article on Her Majesty’s Government:
And, the PM does not appoint the ministers. The Queen does, on the advice of the PM, who in turn gets the authority to do so because he commands the confidence of the Commons. Comes down to the same thing in the end, but one must respect the constitutional niceties. 
Her Majesty retains the reserve powers, notably the power to choose the PM and to dissolve Parliament. As a practical and conventional matter, her choices on the exercise of these powers are normally constrained by the political choices made by the electorate, but in rare cases she could still find it necessary to use them.
Polycarp’s post factually correct. And, regardless of what the precipitating events that led to the Revolution are, they’re immaterial to what is being discussed here.
No. Firstly, there is no one document that is the “UK Constitution,” so even if your contention is true that the U.S. Constitution was based on its UK equivalent, it could hardly be a “modified clone.” A collection of laws passed over a thousand years cannot be “cloned” into a single document. Secondly, you are actually probably thinking of the “Bill of Rights,” which are the first ten Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, which are more or less a restatement of the 1689 English “Bill of Rights” (although updated and modified somewhat).
As Northern Piper has pointed out, the Queen really does have personal prerogatives. Even Elizabeth II has used them, specifically when she appointed Douglas-Home as PM in 1963. I believe the same reserve powers exist in most Commonwealth Realms (i.e. those members of the Commonwealth of Nations that also have Elizabeth as their Queen); Australia experienced such a situation in 1975, when the Governor-General, acting with the Crown’s authority, dismissed the PM. As an aside, it’s ridiculous to even entertain the idea that Thatcher was treated at all differently from other PMs. The Queen was by all accounts quite friendly with Thatcher, and it wasn’t until late in the latter’s mandate that the Queen became concerned about the long-term social effects of the Government’s policies.
You’re getting two sets of events confused. The colonies rebelled in 1776 over the reasons you mentioned. But they formed a government in 1787 on the basis of the reasons Polycarp mentioned.
I think the British pretty much settled that in the mid 1600 during thesomewhat shortened tenure of Charles I, who was also shortened by about 8 or 10 inches. There were some hiccups in the ensuing years but it looks like they’ve pretty much got it all straightened out now. Tthe “Sovereign” is pretty much a rich, ceremonial figurehed.