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Message: <blockquote data-quote="S'mon" data-source="post: 1542658" data-attributes="member: 463"><p>Re UK monarchy - while Parliament certainly has the Real Power these days - and the English Civil War established that Parliament trumps King - it's notable that when I joined the Territorial Army and took the Oath of Allegiance (which is taken in many other contexts, like becoming a citizen) I swore allegiance primarily to "The Queen, Her Heirs and Successors" and secondarily to her representatives in government (ie Tony Blair & whoever succeeds him).  Being a solemn oath, I take this pretty seriously, and I expect a lot of other people do too.  The monarchy thus has a balancing/stabilising function in the British system, just as the "Flag, and the Constitution for which it stands" does in the US system.  Because we don't swear allegiance directly to the executive head of government - the Prime Minister or President - or to the operational head of the military, it becomes much harder for them to rely on the support of the armed forces if they were to attempt to subvert our democratic system.  If the Queen were to withdraw support from the PM, the armed forces in theory are obliged to go along with that decision.  Of course the Queen in practice goes along w what Parliament decides, and I expect would only ever withdraw support from a Prime Minister who attempted to dissolve Parliament and institute a dictatorship, which hopefully is unlikely to happen anytime soon.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></p></blockquote><p></p>

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