Differing technical vocabularies, I think: I meant Parliamentary as opposed to presidential or semi-presidential (the two other main categories of Western-style

Differing technical vocabularies, I think: I meant Parliamentary as opposed to presidential or semi-presidential (the two other main categories of Western-style democracy in political science). Americanists in particular see our insistence that Parliament is not part of government quite bizarre - they include the judicial branch too. You're absolutely right that Parliament hasn't governed directly for a long time (arguably not since the civil war, and that was itself a highly unusual period where some questionable constitutional innovations happened). It's also the case that the question of whether the Crown can govern without constraint from Parliament has been settled in principle for centuries: it can't. The Commons has had to repeatedly assert this over the years, and it looks like they're going to do so again.