She's head of the Church of England (which obviously only covers England), but I was actually referring to her area of power (officially) being religion.
I'm afraid that I've been writing these comments while doing the Civil War in my History lectures, so I'm coming at it from the period of 17th century systems. I have to keep remembering all the changes since the Glorious Revolution. Such as, for example, the de-establishment of the Welsh and Irish Churches.
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but the Prime Minister is the leader of the largest party, she can do sod all about that.
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Officially, the Prime Minister is who she chooses, and it doesn't have to be the leader of the biggest party. It's just that if she chose someone else, they wouldn't have a majority, and so would lose. Remember that our parliamentary system is not actually designed for parties at all, it's designed to comprise of 600-odd independent MPs. In the 19th century, the Monarch would quite often just choose the person they liked most, but this didn't work well, so that person would normally lose, most MPs would support someone else, and the Monarch would have to appoint them.
This is why Alec Douglas-Home was PM, not Butler, because the Queen chose him.