It seems that the queen and charlie boy regularly use their power of veto to change bills introduced in parliament. Those that think the monarch's role is ceremonial need to think again. Unbelievable that she vetoed a bill which gave parliament rather than her the power to go to war. www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/jan/1 ... veto-bills

It seems that the queen and charlie boy regularly use their power of veto to change bills introduced in parliament. Those that think the monarch's role is ceremonial need to think again. Unbelievable that she vetoed a bill which gave parliament rather than her the power to go to war. www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/jan/1 ... veto-bills

Is there a story in there somewhere?

I don't understand why politicians accept such meddling from the royal family. If its true that Prince Charles has vetoed over a dozen laws that is absolutely ludicrous - why isn't this more widely publicised?

If I were the Prime Minister and Charles was interfering with laws I was trying to pass, I'd tell him to off, and that if he tried to veto anything else I'd have the constitution changed, removing all power from him and his family of inbred half-wits.

All very funny for knee-jerk anti-monarchists, but as in reality we are told in the article itself that on no occasion has a veto been used "unless advised to do so by ministers" there seems to be no story here.

Strange the story should come out now, HM has been a brake on excesses by a few governments, many of them blue.

Quote ="Durham Giant"It seems that the queen and charlie boy regularly use their power of veto to change bills introduced in parliament. Those that think the monarch's role is ceremonial need to think again. Unbelievable that she vetoed a bill which gave parliament rather than her the power to go to war. www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/jan/1 ... veto-bills'" Off with their heads. Hasn't the BBC also refused to divulge e mails from Charlie, in which he allegedly attempted to exert influence? The sooner we become a republic, the better.

Quote ="Durham Giant"It seems that the queen and charlie boy regularly use their power of veto to change bills introduced in parliament. Those that think the monarch's role is ceremonial need to think again. Unbelievable that she vetoed a bill which gave parliament rather than her the power to go to war. www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/jan/1 ... veto-bills'" Off with their heads. Hasn't the BBC also refused to divulge e mails from Charlie, in which he allegedly attempted to exert influence? The sooner we become a republic, the better.

Ah, right, so the fact that a power is seldom used is a reason for its perpetuation?
Besides, the fact that Charles is regularly sticking his oar in ... and affecting statute in the process ... is utterly undemocratic.

We are constantly fed the lies that the monarchy is largely ceremonial when, in actuality, it serves to maintain the establishment via the Order of the garter, the House of Lords, the honours system and the distribution of awards of grace and favour.

Nothing knee- jerk about it, the self-interested forelock-tuggers stand between the populace and decent democracy.

you are familiar with the House of Lords???

whatever gave you the idea we lived in a democracy?

Your ability to miss the point is really quite astonishing.
Did you not see that, in the very post to which you replied, I listed the House of Lords as one of the things that impedes democracy?
Even the bit you quoted speaks of what stands between the populace and decent democracy.

There are quite a lot of things which impede our democracy, the house of lords, the voting system we use, even the type of democracy we have, our parliamentary system is in someways undemocratic.

Liz having a power she doesn’t use, and if she did merry hell would be made of it, is fairly low down the list.

Do you think so? really? I would disagree.


No, he is sticking his oar in as he owns the independent country that is the Duchy of Cornwall.


Who constantly feeds you these lies then? I don't remember a single person ever feeding me this lie during my life to date. Maybe I meet the wrong people. Don't you find it an irritant when people are constantly telling you "the monarchy is largely ceremonial"? It would pisz me off, I can tell you. It's an odd thing, though. Why are they picking on you like that?

The monarchy is far from ceremonial. We have a monarch. At the moment, a Queen. This is factual.

The establishment is the establishment but I doubt whether in any major sense it needs the monarch. Those people who form the establishment are not, in the overwhelming majority, royals.

The honours system is of course pretty much entirely the province of politicians. It is hardly realistic to lay any criticism of it at the feet of the monarch, who simply hands out the gongs.

The House of Lords is, like the monarchy, a fundamental part of the constitutional setup of this country. The monarchy does nothing, at all, to serve to maintain it. Unless Parliament votes to abolish the HoL then it will remain.


You have got to be joking. What stands between the populace and decent democracy is a lot of things, but (for just one example) international conglomerates including the banks are a million times more relevant to that point than the monarchy. Unless you think the queen runs all of them. I think the implication that if you abolished the monarchy this would restore decent democracy to the populace is breathtakingly naive. It would have no such effect at all.

Why on earth would a minister need to advise the queen to use her powerless veto???

Couldn't possibly be that the queens advisor, after advise from the queen, advises the minister to to advise the queen to veto something she doesn't like, could it??

Because it would be of little apparent use on other planets?

But seriously, if you can't work that out by yourself, then I can't help you.


It could be the tooth fairy too, but there are no grounds to think so.

Quote ="Durham Giant" Unbelievable that she vetoed a bill which gave parliament rather than her the power to go to war. www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/jan/1 ... veto-bills'" That bill was raised from the back benches in protest at Tony Blair going to war with Iraq without the consent of Parliament. The Queen almost certainly only vetoed it at the behest of the Government as it would have been quite embarassing for Tony Blair had it passed.

Quote ="Durham Giant" Unbelievable that she vetoed a bill which gave parliament rather than her the power to go to war. www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/jan/1 ... veto-bills'" That bill was raised from the back benches in protest at Tony Blair going to war with Iraq without the consent of Parliament. The Queen almost certainly only vetoed it at the behest of the Government as it would have been quite embarassing for Tony Blair had it passed.

Actually I would agree that there are many obstacles to democracy, to suggest that I think the Queen runs them all is just reductio ad absurdum.
This thread is about the powers of the monarchy so I was commenting on that.

Your post seems to veer from saying that the monarchy is not just ceremonial to saying that it is impotent.
Both cannot be true at the same time.

It would indeed. Which is probably why nobody has suggested it.


You seem to be confused. The monarchy, far from being impotent, has to sign off every single piece of legislation otherwise it does not become law. That is hardly ceremonial, and pretty much well towards the opposite end of the scale of impotence.

I would agree that there's a tendency amongst some monarchists to understate the constitutional powers of the monarchy, but to make the claim that the queen's just there for the tourists doesn't actually make it true. In a similar vein, they don't publicise that Charlie owns Cornwall, personally, (well, the prince of Wales does) rather than it being a part of the UK. You could say that they let people think (insomuch as they consider it at all) that the "Duchy of Cornwall" is largely a purely ceremonial title nowadays (albeit somehow a source of considerable dosh for Charles, which is never quite explained, and nobody ask, "Why the feck is that then?"icon_wink.gif but that doesn't make it true.

I am not confused ... all of that is anti-democratic.

All of what is?

I would suggest you consider the difference between un-democratic and anti- or pro-democratic.

I would certainly argue that the constitutional monarchy that we have promotes and sustains the democratic process because there is a power other than that of democracy with democracy. The question would be whether that power lessens or improves democracy. While our democracy is hardly perfect, it is a democracy and has fared infinitely better than countries where the monarchy was abolished. Do these tend to end up as dictatorships as a consequence, or by accident? I don't know, it's a very complicated issue to which there can't be a definitive answer. But I would say I believe it is a consequence, at least in large part.

Interestingly, I note that according to official figures 6 or 7 out of the top 10 countries in the world in categories such as quality of life, Human Development index etc happen to be constitutional monarchies. It could be a fluke, but I don't believe it is.
[urlhttp://hdrstats.undp.org/en/indicators/default.html[/url

Obviously a monarch who can veto legislation is, objectively, undemocratic but the question is, does having that system promote our democracy, or detract from it? By acting as a check in that way, in my opinion it promotes it.
You may disagree but that's the argument.

For me, I'd rather have Brenda in that role than instead yet another self-serving, corrupt politician or stooge, being inevitably from the upper echelons of some vested interest or other, backed by big money, dancing to their tune. We'd probably end up with somebody like Bliar.

Just sounds like a way for government to veto stuff they don't like on the quiet, or to do a U-turn without it looking like a U-turn.

I'm no royalist, but the way the article slips the significant information in after most of the article is written just shows that they think most people will only read the headlines or the first paragraph and then just take the rest of the story as confirmation of the headline.

When actually it's never been used unless told by the government ministers that it needs to be used.

Interesting article in today's Mirror from John Prescott on the injustices suffered by the [url=http://www.mirror.co.uk/opinion/news-opinion/john-prescott-on-the-scandal-of-the-chagos-islanders-1545941inhabitants of the Chagos Islands[/url

After being forcibly removed from their homes and dumped in a foreign country. After years of campaigning and winning court battles, they were finally allowed by Robin Cook to return to the outer islands (Diego Garcia was still off limits), only for that decision to be reversed by Royal Prerogative.

Signed the petition, no way we can talk about democracy for one set of British citizens and not for another. They are British and should be protected the same way as the rest of us regardless of the distance of their home from London. epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/34282

Signed the petition, no way we can talk about democracy for one set of British citizens and not for another. They are British and should be protected the same way as the rest of us regardless of the distance of their home from London. epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/34282

I'm not sure what the Royal prerogative really has to do with this. If we are moving on to discussing Diego Garcia, then it is a 99.9% thread drift as it has almost nothing to do with the Queen.

The "prerogative" order was made by the governement, signed off by the Queen, and not the other way round.

The government of the day acted pretty shabbilly in their tactics to evict the Chagossians, in order to circumvent possible UN difficulties. But, the situation is a great deal more complicated than that.

In the 4 years that passed before the prerogative order was made, NONE of the Chagossians returned to the islands (which apart from Diego Garcia itself they were free to do).

There has been much litigation about the case, and settlements were reached between the government and most of the Chagossians at various times.

The final ruling in the UK system came not from the Queen, but by a 3-2 House of Lords ruling. Now, I do sympathise. The Court of Appeal had decided unanimously to the contray, and so if I then found a decision in my favour overturned on a 3-2 majority, I would be pretty sick, but there is no escaping that that's just an inevitable consequence from time to time of having a finite number of appellate courts and a finite number of judges. The majority view is the decision, and that has to be accepted.

However the issues were then aired in Europe (and not for the first time) and the full report of the ECHR case can be read [url=http://www.bailii.org/eu/cases/ECHR/2012/2094.html here.[/url This is a good place to start as it gives a potted history of the whole matter. The ECHR threw the application out. I have to say that I find the reasoning unimpeachable. It also seems to me that not many Chagossians actually want to go back, and I would certainly understand that, because the whole thing started by the only major employer in the islands closing down, and so any re-settlers would basically have nothing to do, no jobs and no source of income. It would be a dead zone, and even if a few hundred did move back, it seems to me to be a plan as doomed as the Dodo, would there even be a next generation, why would any young Chagossian choose to stay on the island when there was no obvious future in doing so?

I don't think there is therefore any meaningful analogy with the Falklands at all, and while I can certainly sympathise with the remaining Chagossians to a degree, it isn't some great cause celebre. Credit to the remaining combatants for whipping it up into the public eye but unlike the Dodo, the Chagossians have had full resort to the Highest Courts and the House of Lords, and now the ECHR have finally ruled against them. In a judicial system such as ours, that is final, and that's how it has to be, like it or not. Like the Dodo I'm afraid it's a dead duck.