Hacker News Reader

Comment by onei | Hacker News Reader

To clarify a bit further, the UK head of state is King Charles III, as he is for a bunch of other countries in the Commonwealth.

Head of state in the UK is a bit weird compared to countries that abolished or never had a monarchy.

View on HN

Technically we did abolish the monarchy back in the 17th century, but the replacement was so bad we brought them back about 10 years later, which I think makes us a minority of one and even more weird.

Anyway, back on topic: this is a ridiculous law that is forcing services to erode their security while smart criminals can just use some nice free open-source software somewhere else for E2E communication. And a lot of this is definitely down to lawmakers not understanding technology.

The vast majority of democracies separated the roles of head of state and head of government.

You’re correct, however I gave GP the benefit of the doubt and assumed they meant Secretary of State ;-)

And, to be fair, while I’m generally a small r republican, I’m seeing benefits of having a non politically aligned head of state after J6. While the monarch has limited power, booting out a PM that can’t command the confidence of Parliament is one of them. The question of whether Johnson would accept being dethroned a la Trump was always silly given his consent was never needed.

The UK monarch's power is largely based on convention more than active decision making. For example, a government is formed at the invitation of the monarch, but that's long reflected the results of an election. Getting rid of a PM generally happens when they run out of luck. That sometimes coincides with the ruling party/coalition imploding. The next PM is then shortlisted by MPs and selected by a minority of the electorate.

I guess the US equivalent is the leader of the house being unable to hold their majority together. In some ways the presidential election feels more democratic if a relative outsider (like Trump was) can win. But a 2 year lead up is crazy.

> And, to be fair, while I’m generally a small r republican, I’m seeing benefits of having a non politically aligned head of state

One of the benefits of a constitutional monarchy is the head of state did not campaign for the position.

I’ve become a bit of fan of it over the last few years. That said, I don’t think the UK can be replicated.

It wraps ultimate power up in a contradiction, you have it but you can’t use it. Sure, technically you could but it would be your last act.

Another important aspect, the for and against is currently split between parties, so there’s somewhat of unification factor between parties on that divide as well.

It gets a lot of hate, because it is imperfect, but I don’t think it gets its fair shake. My views more of, if it ain’t broke is it really worth the risk changing it.

> Sure, technically you could but it would be your last act.

It was used in Australia in the 1970s

Reply on news.ycombinator.com