Britain couldn’t just wake up one morning and go, “Right, that’s it then. Off you go, Royal family. Pip pip, cheerio.” Well they could, but she wouldn’t, because it’s just not that easy. According to Insider, it would take an act of parliament to abolish the monarchy. That means there would have to be a lot of agreement amongst people who don’t usually agree with each other, and even then it would never happen. Why? Because in order to abolish Britain’s monarchy you have to get the monarch herself on board with the idea — the act of parliament would have to be signed by the queen, and though it is true that the queen mostly just sits back and lets the elected government hold the reins of the nation, that may be the one thing she decides she’s not willing to do.

More importantly, giving the queen and her weird family the boot would be a monumental undertaking. It would be expensive, politically costly if it were to fail, and it would be largely meaningless. The queen does officially still have certain powers. (According to Heart, she can appoint a new prime minister if the office becomes vacant, she can declare war, and she can veto bills.) But she’s never used any of these powers and isn’t ever likely to. Why? Because the queen is very aware that she needs to behave or one day someone might actually try to take her crown.

Despite what they’d probably like you to believe, the royal family doesn’t own Buckingham Palace. They don’t own Windsor castle or the crown jewels, either. According to Insider, these properties are owned by the Crown Estate, which is technically the property of the queen, but only while she’s the queen. So when she dies, Buckingham Palace and everything else held by the Crown Estate goes to Charles, and when he gets stripped of his royal title because nobody likes him … what then?

Well, everything would go to the government, who would likely give the former royal family an eviction notice. Politely, of course. They’d have to move out of Buckingham Palace and find a new castle to call home.

So what would become of the royal residences? Would they fall into disrepair? Would Boris Johnson move in and spend his days taking selfies of himself wearing the crown jewels? Probably not. The British government would almost certainly want to capitalize on the existence of those buildings as much as possible. They’d probably be at least somewhat mindful of the argument that tourism dollars will dry up as the former royal family vanishes into obscurity, so don’t be surprised to see Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle turned into full time tourist attractions. Bearing in mind, of course, that they are already tourist attractions, it’s just that you can only visit them when the royal family isn’t in residence.

One of the things that makes the British, well, British is all of the pomp. America doesn’t do pomp. When someone visits the White House, everyone wears a boring suit, shakes hands in the most boring way possible, sits down in a boring office surrounded by a bunch of other boring people and talks about boring things. American politicians don’t have much use for ceremony.

The British, on the other hand, often use the pomp and ceremony of the monarchy as a way of impressing important visitors. According to the BBC this is officially called a “state visit” and it’s one of the queen’s more important duties. At the request of the Prime Minister, the Queen basically throws a royal party for a visiting head of state, complete with fancy lunches and a banquet. The point of all this isn’t really spelled out but there can be no doubt it’s done to impress the visitor, with a possible side effect of that visitor becoming a lot more willing to take Britain’s interests to heart.

Dissolution of the monarchy would mean an end to all that, and future Prime Ministers would have to learn to be happy with American style handshakes and boring suits around boring tables in boring offices. That would fundamentally and permanently alter Britain’s political culture and the way it does business on the world stage, and it’s hard to know what the real effect of that would be.

In the Brand Finance Monarchy Report of the economics of the royal family, the authors argued that the monarchy made more money for the country than it cost. The total annual cost of the monarchy to each individual taxpayer, the authors claim, is the equivalent of about 1p a day or roughly 1.4 American cents. In less “See! The monarchy is practically free!” terms, each British citizen spends about £4.50 a year, or roughly six bucks. If you multiply that out by the total number of British citizens it’s about £292 million (close to $400 million), so the amount is not as insignificant as Brand Finance wants you to believe.

If the monarchy goes away, all of that money can go elsewhere. But would it have the same return as Brand Finance says the monarchy has? That’s up for debate. The answer would depend on whether the British government decides to use the money for things like housing, healthcare, job creation, and so forth, or if Boris Johnson decides to just turn it all into paper money hats or something.

Still, when you consider the other things Britain spends money on, £292 million is pretty negligible. Social protection costs taxpayers £285 billion, followed by healthcare at £178 billion and education at £116 billion. All money well spent, but it does seem a bit petty to moan about the monarchy when it doesn’t even make the list of top 10 biggest taxpayer expenses.

Fundamentally, the reason for abolishing the monarchy is the modern notion that political positions should not be hereditary, they should be elected. Well, the queen isn’t the only hereditary politician in Britain. There’s also the House of Lords, otherwise known as The Right Honourable the Lords Spiritual and Temporal of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in Parliament assembled. No, really.

Anyway, the House of Lords is the second chamber of parliament and according to the UK Parliament, it spends 60% of its time reviewing legislation and the other 40% making sure the government doesn’t get out of line. It also includes 92 hereditary peers, who are people who get to be in the House of Lords because they inherited the right to be there.

Now granted, Britain has done some reforming of the House of Lords. Up until 1999 every hereditary peer (750 of them at the time) got to be in the House of Lords. The House of Lords Act changed that, and now there are just 92 seats and those people have to be elected … by previous hereditary peers. So there’s still an element of only getting to be there because your bloodline says you can be there, and that’s icky. If you’re going to give the queen the boot, you really have to do the same for everyone who has a hereditary position in the British government, otherwise what’s the point?