Alastair Campbell calls for 'joke' honours system to be scrapped

Tony Blair’s former spin chief, Alastair Campbell, has called for Britain’s honours system to be scrapped because it has become “something of an international joke.”

Mr Campbell, regarded as the template for The Thick of It central character, Malcolm Tucker, took to Twitter after leaks of this year’s honour list.

The New Year roll call is expected to confirm a knighthood for David Cameron’s election guru, Lynton Crosby.

The former Carry On and BBC EastEnders actress, Barbara Windsor, and the champion jockey, Tony McCoy, are also both expected to be given honours.

Mr McCoy’s close friends believe he will receive a knighthood; with ‘Babs’ Windsor anticipated to be made a Dame in recognition of her services to acting and extensive charity work.

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The Australian-born political strategist, sometimes called the ‘Wizard of Oz’ is being rewarded for creating the strategic architecture that delivered the Conservatives their first overall majority for 20 years.

Mr Crosby has a chequered record in delivering victories for his clients.

He has been credited as the brains that helped win Boris Johnson two terms as London’s elected mayor, and for the victory that defeated Labour’s Ed Miliband and almost destroyed the Liberal Democrats, the Tories’ coalition partners from 2010.

His earlier electoral successes in Australia resulted him being awarded the Order of Australia in 2005.

However earlier this year he was brought in to help the Conservative Party of Canada. Although using the same techniques that were successful in the 2015 election in the UK, Canadian voters rejected his message and elected the young charismatic Liberal leader, Justin Trudeau, son of the former PM, Pierre Trudeau.

Mr Crosby’s links to the tobacco industry through his company, Crosby Textor Fullbrook, remain controversial. CTF were hired by Philip Morris International, owner of the Marlboro brand, to help limit plans to sell cigarettes in unbranded packaging. Mr Crosby has denied allegations that he played any part in a lobbying operation that included appeals to a government minister.

Labour MP John Mann, said the honour to Mr Crosby, expected to be confirmed later this week, would “degrade the system” and was an insult to deserving “heroes.”

The director of the political reform pressure group, Unlock Democracy, also criticised the honour to Mr Crosby. Alexandra Renwick said a reward to a lobbyist and a political consultant would “undermine trust in politics.”

With Mr Campbell calling for both the honours system and the House of Lords to be scrapped, and for Britain to rethink what both stood for, opposition figures may be leaving themselves open to charges of forgetting their own past use of formal patronage.

In 2004, with Mr Campbell’s former boss, Tony Blair, still firmly in control of Downing Street, Labour nominated their strategist and pollster, Philip Gould, for a life peerage.

The pollster was a key strategist in five general elections, three of them won by Mr Blair. He became Baron Gould of Brookwood.

The Liberal Democrats’ former director of campaigns and elections between 1989 and 2003, Chris Rennard, was created a life peer in 1999, becoming Baron Rennard of Wavertree.

Although his resignation from the LibDems in 2009 was shrouded in allegations of ”inappropriate behaviour” and sexual harassment which he denied, Lord Rennard is still credited with delivering an increase in LibDem MPs under Paddy Ashdown and then Charles Kennedy to levels not seen since 1923 when the old Liberal Party were a force in UK politics.