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This seems a rather passionately biased take on the - undoubtedly very controversial - constitutional moment, that seems determined to push "blame" onto the lat

This seems a rather passionately biased take on the - undoubtedly very controversial - constitutional moment, that seems determined to push "blame" onto the late Queen. The title is absurd clickbait. Reading into the background in less partial news articles it seems that the Royal team were rightly answering the GG's questions in his uncommonly frequent letters and stressing the action should be a last resort. If the guy was a bad choice, that's ultimately on the Prime Minister who selected him, the one he dismissed...

anonymous_sorry 4y ago
The monarchy means that prime ministers, who are generally only directly elected by people in a small geographic constituency, get to exercise the power of a head of state, via the monarch. Even weirder in this case, the prime minister (not directly elected by the general populace) appointed an Governor General (not elected at all) to a position with monarchic powers, and that power was used against him.
- 3pt14159 4y ago
  I know this seems weird to outsiders, but as a Canadian I quite like it. Having PMs elected by MPs means that it is harder for a single rabble rousing politician to sweep to power and distort the use of, say, the military. Having Governers General appointed by PMs, and confirmed by the monarch, means that someone outside of politics (usually a well respected figure like a university president or astronaut) holds the final red line about whether or not an election must be called. Since it's via appointment, the monarch doesn't bear the brunt of the public rage for it. And since the monarch must confirm the GG it means that the position can't be stuffed with an obvious political hack. It jives better than it sounds it would jive. It's like checks and balances with as many arguments and gridlock. As an aside, I feel the same way about the Notwithstanding Clause[0] of the Canadian Constitution. It's a useful tool to diffuse hard issues that can't be used against the public to stop them from voting or speaking and since it automatically expires after a short, preset time the power is ultimately in the hands of the electorate. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_33_of_the_Canadian_Charter_of_Rights_and_Freedoms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_33_of_the_Canadian_Cha...
  - amanwithnoplan 4y ago
    >someone outside of politics [...] holds the final red line about whether or not an election must be called This seems like only a theoretical red line. If/when the GG does anything against the advice of the PM it's a crisis moment. There was a bit of a media fuss in 2008 but then the GG just did as she was told, no?
  - bee_rider 4y ago
    Is your system notably different from most parliamentary systems? The PM is usually selected by seeing who can put together a large enough coalition of parties, in terms of the sum of MPs in those parties, right? Is the difference that your MPs actually vote, rather than it being assumed that they follow their party leadership, or something like that? But I imagine the parties must have a way of keeping their MPs in line… I mean that isn’t how it works in the US of course but I was under the impression our system was more unusual. Parliamentary systems seem quite popular. (In the US it often seems like we’ve got this weird old version of Representative Democracy XP, while most of the rest of the advanced democracies have updated to Representative Democracy 10: Parliamentary Edition. We had a bunch of the original devs on staff, so they wrote a bunch of in-house patches, which let us keep XP running well past EOL, but now it turns out layering on patches like that results in an incredibly fragile system and we can’t update anything without possibly taking down the whole system.)
    - SllX 4y ago
      Well, it’s more like if XP had never died and was seeing continuous ongoing development. The kernel isn’t patched often, but the layers above are very very actively maintained by Congress, State Legislatures, Governor’s Mansions, the White House and a diffuse network of courts from SCOTUS to the lowliest traffic court in the little towns that can’t really afford them but charge obscene fines to maintain their traffic courts. If you’re only interested in XP’s kernel rather than the rest of it, you’re going to have a bad time.
  - derefr 4y ago
    In est, you can think of the GG’s appointment as being done by the Sovereign — just with the nomination process delegated to the country’s current PM in order to minimize the Sovereign’s workload (especially for the Commonwealth, where they don’t live anywhere near the country themselves, and so don’t have an independently-legible candidate pool to choose a GG from. Back when Canada first became independent, appointing a GG independent of the PM would have meant a transatlantic voyage!) Likely, if these countries were only just de-colonizing and ratifying constitutions today — where the existence of an intelligence service with global reach, directly reporting to the Sovereign, can be assumed — then the GG appointment for each country would be probably be done directly by the Sovereign, with MI6 analysts doing the nominations and then the countries’ PMs (or trusted delegate cabinet ministers) merely doing recorded interviews for the Sovereign to watch and evaluate.
- rgavuliak 4y ago
  > not directly elected by the general populace Why does this matter? A Prime minister is the result of a general populace choice.
  - MagnumOpus 4y ago
    I think OP means the prime minister has to be voted in by his own party's members of parliament - and OP trusts the integrity and foresight of 300 MPs more than that of the unwashed general electorate. (He might have had a point 50 or 100 years ago when the majority of MPs took pride in integrity and public service and weren't mostly full-time party hacks and climbers of the greasy pole...)
  - anonymous_sorry 4y ago
    It's a factor, but in a general election voters have to balance multiple considerations. From which local candidate is going to be a good advocate for my area, via which policy platform is best, all the way up to who should have the nuclear codes. And then the candidate Prime Minister you (partially) based your decision on might resign, and the MPs of the governing party will pick a new person to exercise those powers, with no recourse to the electorate. This is not theoretical. In the UK it's happened twice in the last six months.

anonymous_sorry 4y ago

The monarchy means that prime ministers, who are generally only directly elected by people in a small geographic constituency, get to exercise the power of a head of state, via the monarch. Even weirder in this case, the prime minister (not directly elected by the general populace) appointed an Governor General (not elected at all) to a position with monarchic powers, and that power was used against him.

3pt14159 4y ago
I know this seems weird to outsiders, but as a Canadian I quite like it. Having PMs elected by MPs means that it is harder for a single rabble rousing politician to sweep to power and distort the use of, say, the military. Having Governers General appointed by PMs, and confirmed by the monarch, means that someone outside of politics (usually a well respected figure like a university president or astronaut) holds the final red line about whether or not an election must be called. Since it's via appointment, the monarch doesn't bear the brunt of the public rage for it. And since the monarch must confirm the GG it means that the position can't be stuffed with an obvious political hack. It jives better than it sounds it would jive. It's like checks and balances with as many arguments and gridlock. As an aside, I feel the same way about the Notwithstanding Clause[0] of the Canadian Constitution. It's a useful tool to diffuse hard issues that can't be used against the public to stop them from voting or speaking and since it automatically expires after a short, preset time the power is ultimately in the hands of the electorate. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_33_of_the_Canadian_Charter_of_Rights_and_Freedoms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_33_of_the_Canadian_Cha...
- amanwithnoplan 4y ago
  >someone outside of politics [...] holds the final red line about whether or not an election must be called This seems like only a theoretical red line. If/when the GG does anything against the advice of the PM it's a crisis moment. There was a bit of a media fuss in 2008 but then the GG just did as she was told, no?
- bee_rider 4y ago
  Is your system notably different from most parliamentary systems? The PM is usually selected by seeing who can put together a large enough coalition of parties, in terms of the sum of MPs in those parties, right? Is the difference that your MPs actually vote, rather than it being assumed that they follow their party leadership, or something like that? But I imagine the parties must have a way of keeping their MPs in line… I mean that isn’t how it works in the US of course but I was under the impression our system was more unusual. Parliamentary systems seem quite popular. (In the US it often seems like we’ve got this weird old version of Representative Democracy XP, while most of the rest of the advanced democracies have updated to Representative Democracy 10: Parliamentary Edition. We had a bunch of the original devs on staff, so they wrote a bunch of in-house patches, which let us keep XP running well past EOL, but now it turns out layering on patches like that results in an incredibly fragile system and we can’t update anything without possibly taking down the whole system.)
  - SllX 4y ago
    Well, it’s more like if XP had never died and was seeing continuous ongoing development. The kernel isn’t patched often, but the layers above are very very actively maintained by Congress, State Legislatures, Governor’s Mansions, the White House and a diffuse network of courts from SCOTUS to the lowliest traffic court in the little towns that can’t really afford them but charge obscene fines to maintain their traffic courts. If you’re only interested in XP’s kernel rather than the rest of it, you’re going to have a bad time.
- derefr 4y ago
  In est, you can think of the GG’s appointment as being done by the Sovereign — just with the nomination process delegated to the country’s current PM in order to minimize the Sovereign’s workload (especially for the Commonwealth, where they don’t live anywhere near the country themselves, and so don’t have an independently-legible candidate pool to choose a GG from. Back when Canada first became independent, appointing a GG independent of the PM would have meant a transatlantic voyage!) Likely, if these countries were only just de-colonizing and ratifying constitutions today — where the existence of an intelligence service with global reach, directly reporting to the Sovereign, can be assumed — then the GG appointment for each country would be probably be done directly by the Sovereign, with MI6 analysts doing the nominations and then the countries’ PMs (or trusted delegate cabinet ministers) merely doing recorded interviews for the Sovereign to watch and evaluate.
rgavuliak 4y ago
> not directly elected by the general populace Why does this matter? A Prime minister is the result of a general populace choice.
- MagnumOpus 4y ago
  I think OP means the prime minister has to be voted in by his own party's members of parliament - and OP trusts the integrity and foresight of 300 MPs more than that of the unwashed general electorate. (He might have had a point 50 or 100 years ago when the majority of MPs took pride in integrity and public service and weren't mostly full-time party hacks and climbers of the greasy pole...)
- anonymous_sorry 4y ago
  It's a factor, but in a general election voters have to balance multiple considerations. From which local candidate is going to be a good advocate for my area, via which policy platform is best, all the way up to who should have the nuclear codes. And then the candidate Prime Minister you (partially) based your decision on might resign, and the MPs of the governing party will pick a new person to exercise those powers, with no recourse to the electorate. This is not theoretical. In the UK it's happened twice in the last six months.