Can a member of the royal family do as he or she pleases?
It is true that members of the royal family do not have any formal constitutional functions. They do not, however, have the same freedom as the rest of the nation’s citizens to behave and say in public what they wish. For example, if they intend to make a speech which could be considered controversial, it is courteous for them to send a copy of their speech beforehand to the appropriate government minister. The Sovereign and his heir do not vote in elections, general or local ones, because they must remain politically neutral and it would be considered unconstitutional for them to do so. Until 1999, the members of the royal family who held a hereditary peerage were subject to a ‘legal incapacity to vote’, as members of the house of lords. The House of Lords Act of 1999 has removed that disqualification for all peers who lost the right to sit in the House of Lords, including the prince of Wales, the dukes of Edinburgh, York, Gloucester, and Kent, and the earl of Wessex. Traditionally, H
