Here’s a fact that surprises a lot of people: every UK law still requires royal assent, and bills affecting Crown interests need “King’s consent” before Parliament can pass them. That is a hereditary, unaccountable veto point sitting inside the legislative process. It may rarely be used dramatically, but the power shapes what gets proposed and negotiated. A democracy should not have an inherited figure quietly embedded in lawmaking. That is the clearest sense in which the monarchy is a net drag.

My opponent says the powers are ceremonial and exercised on ministerial advice. But King's consent is a different animal: a hereditary filter applied before Parliament even debates bills touching Crown interests. Because it is confidential and almost never refused publicly, we cannot measure how much it shapes what gets proposed. That is the debit: less transparency and an unaccountable interest inside lawmaking. The few pounds per person is beside the point. The monarchy does not need to veto often to be a drag; it only needs to make certain proposals harder to bring forward.

Consider the 2021 reporting that the Queen privately lobbied ministers to change a transparency law shielding her private wealth, using the Crown’s confidential channels. That is the real-world version of my point: an inherited, unaccountable interest operating inside lawmaking, not a ceremonial flourish. My opponent says a targeted statute could fix transparency, but that concedes the problem and skips why such fixes are hard: the monarchy’s constitutional position is itself the obstacle. Rare refusal is not the test. A power that is politically costly to use still filters proposals before they reach a vote. That is the drag.