Dishonouring Boris: The Resignation Honours List Controversy

Honours Lists are a major flaw in the UK system. They guarantee that totally unqualified friends and supporters of the PM are honoured, regardless of any real merit, often with Life Peerages.

From The European Conservative

By Paul du Quenoy

Like Johnson himself, his resignation honours were outsized. In May, calls came for Johnson’s list to be scrapped altogether.

The United Kingdom suffers from cancel culture as badly as—if not worse than—any other part of the Anglosphere. As Britain endures its worst economy in 70 years and is only just starting to right itself after months of political turmoil, its highest corridors of power still reverberate with symbolic attempts to come to terms with the controversial resignation of former Prime Minister Boris Johnson. He was forced from office amid a collection of scandals, by far the most damning of which was an investigative finding that he had violated his own government’s strict COVID-19 pandemic restrictions to hold drinks parties at his official residence.

Johnson apologized and paid the legally required civil fine, but the damage was done. Still a loud voice in Conservative politics, he lost control of his party last July and stepped down in September 2022, to be succeeded for 49 days by the hapless Liz Truss and then, more lastingly, by establishment darling Rishi Sunak. Johnson’s former party is lagging in the polls, and most observers believe that the next general election, which must be held by January 2025, will return a Labour government.

In the meantime, Johnson’s most topical legacy remains his resignation honours list, a uniquely British convention that allows outgoing prime ministers to nominate individuals they deem worthy of distinction for honorific awards granted by the monarch. These include peerages, now given on a lifetime basis outside the Royal Family, which come with a permanent appointment to the House of Lords, as well as knighthoods, damehoods, and other titles. The monarch typically grants them without question. Peerages are now subject to review by a House of Lords appointment commission that can object to nominees, though the sitting prime minister can overrule it to grant what are in effect lifetime positions in the British parliament that come with generous daily allowances for participation and other perquisites, including the right of the recipients’ children to use the designation “Honourable” for the duration of their lives.

Until now, few resignation honours have provoked much controversy, beyond the standard leftist caterwauling against the inequality suggested by titles and the prolonged and unfinished project of House of Lords reform, which leaves that chamber—where life peers continue to sit alongside a reduced number of hereditary peers and senior Church of England bishops—the world’s second largest legislative body after China’s National People’s Congress.

Like Johnson himself, his resignation honours were outsized. Although the list has not been publicly disclosed, in its initial form it reportedly included as many as 100 names, or roughly twice as many as former prime ministers David Cameron and Theresa May had included in their resignation honours after substantially longer premierships. Truss is believed to have submitted a much more modest list of only four names after resigning from her seven-week term, reportedly after receiving advice to keep it short to avoid embarrassing the newly proclaimed King Charles III.

Johnson’s original list reportedly included a knighthood for his father Stanley Johnson, who had been a Conservative Member of the European Parliament from 1979 to 1984 but later failed to secure any larger role in British electoral politics. (Johnson elevated his younger brother, former member of parliament Jo Johnson, to the House of Lords in his parliamentary dissolution honours list in 2020.) Other reported Johnson honours include peerages for two youthful personal assistants from his premiership, who are both believed to be around 30 years old, as well as loyalists in parliament, Conservative Party donors, Brexit leaders, failed Conservative London mayoral candidate Shaun Bailey, and others Johnson found deserving. At least four of those said to be included on his list are current members of the House of Commons nominated for peerages, whose Commons seats would have to be filled by by-elections if they were elevated to the Lords. In the case of two of those MPs, their majorities at the last election were under 5,000 votes, suggesting that the troubled Conservatives could lose those and, possibly, the other seats in off-schedule elections that would be scrutinized as bellwethers of the national political mood.

It is believed that Johnson’s list has been delayed in part to avoid such electoral embarrassment, but its sheer size also seems to have been a factor. In March, Conservative insiders reportedly approached him with a request to reduce it to something more in line with those of his predecessors. He is believed to have complied and cut the list to 50 names.

In May, however, calls came for Johnson’s list to be scrapped altogether. Despite his civil punishment and loss of office last year, inquiries into the former prime minister’s pandemic activities continue. The House of Commons privileges committee is investigating whether he misled parliament in public statements claiming that he was following COVID rules and guidelines at his residences. Meanwhile, his official pandemic-era diary, which presumably contains lists of visitors to his residences during COVID, has been turned over to two separate police forces that are continuing their investigations. The source of the diaries is the British government’s Cabinet Office, which received copies of them because it was paying Johnson’s legal fees during the investigations and was thus considered a client. Upon inspection, Cabinet Office mandarins appear to have determined that the contents of the diaries required them to be turned over to law enforcement.

Johnson has since severed relations with his government lawyers, saying he has “lost faith” in the system, and he now claims to be unrepresented in his inquiries. It is no secret that the British establishment despises Johnson, blames him for getting Brexit done, and has every interest in blocking his continuing influence in British politics. Turning over his diaries may have been one way to do that, but opposition parties hoping to capitalize on his downfall and general Tory misery are joining in the attack, not only against him but against Britain’s political traditions generally. 

“This disgraced ex-prime minister’s plan to dodge democracy by trying to reward his MP lackeys with promised jobs for life in the House of Lords yet again puts the Tory Party’s interests before the public’s,” said Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner, adding that Sunak should “refuse to do Boris Johnson’s bidding” and scrap his predecessor’s entire list. For good measure, Rayner also criticized Truss’s smaller and also still undisclosed resignation honours as a “list of shame” that betrays “a stunning lack of humility.” Shadow Labour minister for business and industry Bill Esterton condemned both lists as “rewarding failure” since they are said to include a number of Conservative leaders whose economic plans did not rescue the UK from its woes. Labour MP Andy McDonald tweeted: 

This is what happens when you have a second parliamentary chamber based on parentage and patronage. The House of Lords should be abolished but the spectacle of a disgraced Prime Minister handing out peerages to his acolytes is utterly outrageous.

Sunak’s decision will not be an easy one. Already underwater in the polls, preserving Johnson’s and Truss’s honours lists, even after the reduction of Johnson’s in March, will leave him vulnerable to opposition talking points in the next general election campaign. Scrapping it under pressure, on the other hand, will make him look weak and also create a precedent that will frustrate his and future prime ministers’ ability to reward personal and political loyalty. Either way, with a “streamlining” neClas Paleo Traditionalists mon Trad ch conservative Tradw monarch already in place, some of Britain’s political traditions may well be on their way out. And the biggest loser will be the UK’s stability.