Actually, we don't need to assume anything. We have centuries of the monarch just letting Parliament get on with governing the country without interference, because starting a civil war that you are likely to lose for no reason is an absolutely insane idea.
You have to understand that this hypothetical of yours is comparable to the POTUS trying to pass an executive order declaring himself emperor for life. It is such an astoundingly absurd thing to do that, were it to receive even a modicum of support from anyone with the power to enforce it, the result would be a completely new regime and existing laws would be irrelevant anyway.
The point of what I said isn't that the system ensures victory for parliamentarians in a civil war. It is that a civil war is so obviously undesirable to all involved that it wouldn't even be contemplated. You are proposing radical, untested alterations to a system that has been working well for centuries in order to deal with an apocalyptic hypothetical that is extremely unlikely to ever occur.
It seems to me that the UK has had the good fortune of having a reasonable monarchy made up of reasonble people. This is not the same thing as having a well designed government. The test of how well a government is designed is what happens when unreasonable people gain control.
That is not an answer to the question I asked, given the context. We have just established that you don't think every member of a government needs to be democratically elected. What is it about a head of state that means that person specifically needs to be able to be fired by popular vote, while others don't?
We elect someone as the head state through a not so great electoral college process. I believe it should be a direct vote but that's a discussion for a different time. We also elect the legislative branch, mostly democratically some with caveats but that's also a discussion for another time.
So now we have a democratically elected government. They need to appoint quite a subject matter experts to make this government function such as judges, cabinet members, heads of institutions etc. These members of the government, while not directly elected, are accountable to the first two branches of the government which are. If any of these appointed members does something the public finds egregious we can threaten the elected members of the government to remove them or we'll vote them out. One only needs to look at the Trump presidency to see this system in action.
If the head of state was not accountable to the people in this country then our world would be very different today and probably not in a good way.
You could ask the same question about any political system. If any system changed to be less democratic, then it would become less democratic.
Fair point.
Yes, because the monarch exercising certain powers on the advice of the prime minister is an integral part of how the British political system works.
Do you mean ceremonial roles or actual decisions? I only mean that question half rhetorically. I can't actually find an article detailing any time that Queen Elizabeth intervened in government.
Of course not. If there is a problem to be solved, then we should solve the problem. My objection is to you claiming that we should solve a problem that doesn't exist.
I understand why it hasn't been fixed. It takes expenditure of political capitol to change such things.
The monarchy has very little power, in practical (as opposed to hypothetical) terms. The institution of the monarchy is an insurance policy against an executive presidency, which is demonstrably less democratic than a constitutional monarchy.
This is an interesting idea. Is there some UK doctrine where this is stated explicitly or is this something that we hope they'll do in the event of a crisis?
Also, I have to say, if we're calling a president, who is elected, less democratic than a monarch who isn't then we're doing great violence to the English language.
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