WHY are the royals kissing the orange ass?????

[Celerity]

8. In the UK, the King (or Queen regnant, ie one who reigns suo jure, like Elizabeth II did) does have some official powers

Royal prerogative in the United Kingdom

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_prerogative_in_the_United_Kingdom

The royal prerogative is a body of customary authority, privilege, and immunity attached to the British monarch (or "sovereign" ), recognised in the United Kingdom. The monarch is regarded internally as the absolute authority, or "sole prerogative", and the source of many of the executive powers of the British government.

Prerogative powers were formerly exercised by the monarch acting on his or her own initiative. Since the 19th century, by convention, the advice of the prime minister or the cabinet—who are then accountable to Parliament for the decision—has been required in order for the prerogative to be exercised. The monarch remains constitutionally empowered to exercise the royal prerogative against the advice of the prime minister or the cabinet, but in practice would likely only do so in emergencies or where existing precedent does not adequately apply to the circumstances in question.

Today, the royal prerogative is available in the conduct of the government of the United Kingdom, including foreign affairs, defence, and national security. The monarch has a significant constitutional weight in these and other matters, but limited freedom to act, because the exercise of the prerogative is conventionally in the hands of the prime minister and other ministers or other government officials.

Definition

William Blackstone, who maintained that the royal prerogative was any power that could be exercised by only the monarch
The royal prerogative has been called "a notoriously difficult concept to define adequately", but whether a particular type of prerogative power exists is a matter of common law to be decided by the courts as the final arbiter. A prominent constitutional theorist, A. V. Dicey, proposed in the nineteenth century that:

The prerogative appears to be historically and as a matter of fact nothing else than the residue of discretionary or arbitrary authority which at any given time is legally left in the hands of the crown. The prerogative is the name of the remaining portion of the Crown's original authority ... Every act which the executive government can lawfully do without the authority of an Act of Parliament is done in virtue of the prerogative.

While many commentators follow the Diceyan view, there are constitutional lawyers who prefer the definition given by William Blackstone in the 1760s.

By the word prerogative we usually understand that special pre-eminence which the King hath, over and above all other persons, and out of the ordinary course of common law, in right of his regal dignity ... it can only be applied to those rights and capacities which the King enjoys alone, in contradiction to others, and not to those which he enjoys in common with any of his subjects.

Dicey's opinion that any action of governance by the monarch beyond statute is under the prerogative diverges from Blackstone's that the prerogative simply covers those actions that no other person or body in the United Kingdom can undertake, such as declaration of war. Case law exists to support both views. Blackstone's notion of the prerogative being the powers of an exclusive nature was favoured by Lord Parmoor in the De Keyser's Royal Hotel case of 1920, but some difficulty with it was expressed by Lord Reid in the Burmah Oil case of 1965. A clear distinction has not been necessary in the relevant cases, and the courts may never need to settle the question as few cases deal directly with the prerogative itself.

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Prerogative powers

Legislature...................

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Judicial system..................

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Foreign affairs.............

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Other prerogative powers.............

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Use.............

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Limitations................

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Reform

Abolition of the royal prerogative is not imminent, and recent movements to abolish the role of the monarchy and its royal prerogative in government have been unsuccessful. The Ministry of Justice undertook a "review of executive Royal Prerogative powers" in October 2009. Former Labour MP and cabinet minister Tony Benn campaigned unsuccessfully for the abolition of the royal prerogative in the United Kingdom in the 1990s, arguing that all governmental powers in effect exercised on the advice of the prime minister and cabinet should be subject to parliamentary scrutiny and require parliamentary approval. Later governments argued that such is the breadth of topics covered by the royal prerogative that requiring parliamentary approval in each instance where the prerogative is currently used would overwhelm parliamentary time and slow the enactment of legislation.

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