doesn’t the royal family basically just exist for tourists nowadays

class-struggle-anarchism:

Do you mean like, do they not have powers etc? They do, they can veto all kinds of legislation and use that right all the time, Charles intensely lobbies the government at the highest level on all sorts of shit, and the Royal prerogative powers allow prime ministers to go to war without consulting parliament. There was a private members bill to try and get rid of that last one after the Iraq war, but, hilariously, the Queen vetoed it