I think “according to the law” is doing a lot of heavy lifting. That is the part that really makes it an oath to the ‘constitution’ of the UK. You are pledging alligence to the figurehead of the government, to obey them/the government, as long as they/the government are acting legally. If the government does something illegal, or asks you to do something illegal, you should not obey them.

I’m British, and not a fan of the monarchy (especially Charles) but I think that we can see the advantages of having a head of state who has very little power to fuck things up, and that isn’t a position that outside forces billionaires can buy their way into, but has the power to remove a Prime Minister if they tried to do something unconstitutional.

The idea of checks and balances in the US didn’t seem to plan for a bad president being elected with enough support in the house and Senate that he becomes pretty much untouchable (especially after a first term stacking the SC).

I’m defintely not a fan of cops, but in Scotland I never thought of them as evil/lazy/incompetent. They’re still the arm of state control, and have been used to break strikes and stuff, but there is at least a vibe of policing by consent. There are plenty of cases of individual cops who were psychos, and the institution defintely defaults to ‘protecting it’s own’ which is a fucking terrible attitude and in my mind makes all cops culpable for the crimes of the “bad apples”. So I’m still acab overall.

But most of my interactions with the police have been pretty decent, and that includes being questioned as a suspect (for something that I may not have been innocent of…) They don’t ‘solve’ many petty crimes like burglary that actual effect normal people but they are generally university educated and properly trained.

I now live in France, where the police are none of those things. I’ve only heard bad things about them ranging from patronising and incompetent to raping student protesters in the back of the police van. I would never ask a French cop for help, but unless I was high or carrying something illegal, i wouldn’t be worried about talking to a Scottish policeman.