Talk:Elizabeth II

Article Checklist for "Elizabeth II"

Workgroup category or categories	Politics Workgroup, Topic Informant Workgroup [Categories OK]
Article status	Stub: no more than a few sentences
Underlinked article?	No
Basic cleanup done?	Yes
Checklist last edited by	John Stephenson 04:49, 11 July 2007 (CDT)

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The statement "In none of these offices does she hold any formal political power." is not quite correct. At least in the UK, but also in Australia, there are some vestigial formal powers. As far as I recollect, the monarch in the UK invites a leader of a political party to form a governent, but she is not required to choose the party with the most seats. This discretion has yet to be misused, but remains as a formal power. In the case of Australia, unless it has changed without my noticing, the monarch appoints a Governor-General as her representative: presumably, s/he has a few roles to play and therefore has some limited powers.

Can we find someone who knows about constitutional issues to rephrase these things? Some Editors, maybe?--Martin Baldwin-Edwards 22:10, 23 July 2007 (CDT)

I will check this, but my understanding is she has no power - she appoints people on the advice of the prime minister or other figure, i.e. effectively these posts are filled by the governments. It is true that no law says she has to pick the biggest party to form a government - because the UK constitution works by precedent and convention - but she arguably has no authority to do so since the establishment of a constitutional monarchy and parliamentary sovereignty in the 17th century. John Stephenson 23:00, 24 July 2007 (CDT)

Further to this, I think the idea is that because parliament is supreme, the Sovereign is obligated to appoint whoever is most likely to command the support of the House of Commons - even if their party be in a minority. This happened with Harold Wilson in 1974. If she didn't appoint the PM with most support, parliament would be able to topple her choice through a no-confidence vote. Also, in the past it was technically possible for the Sovereign to sack a prime minister - apparently this last happened in the 1830s - but in practice it would be very unlikely to happen today, since there is so little precedent for it. The UK doesn't really work through laws written in stone; rather, there's a sort of collective expectation about what's 'the done thing'... John Stephenson 23:07, 24 July 2007 (CDT)

The problem is with the expression "formal political power". What you have described above is actual practice, but if the monarch chooses to part with recent precedent this departure would be lawful. In particular, the appointment of a prime minister is solely within the monarch's purview and in certain cases the evaluation of which party would command most support could be a subjective view. Even in other cases, the fact is that the monarch possesses "formal political power", however s/he should choose to exercise it. I suggest that you remove the phrase completely, and talk about the lack of a written constitution and reliance upon precedent, whilst formally and ceremonially the monarch has supreme political authority as Head of State.--Martin Baldwin-Edwards 06:32, 25 July 2007 (CDT)