How honours became a weapon in political warfare

Even before Sadiq Khan’s knighthood was announced in today’s honours list, there was anger at the prospect of such an award; a petition circulating among right-wing opponents of the London mayor accrued 200,000 signatures even before Christmas.

It has not helped that this year’s regular new year honours have come so quickly after the resignation honours of several recent prime ministers, and the news that figures including Keir Starmer’s recently ousted Downing Street fixer, Sue Gray, are to receive peerages.

No. There was outrage in 1916 when William Waldorf Astor, one of the richest men in the world, became Lord Astor as it was felt an American had bought their way into the English aristocracy (even though he gave a lot to charity).

In 1925, parliament passed the Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act.

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Resignation lists have a particularly controversial history. Harold Wilson’s “lavender list”, which included a number of wealthy businessmen, became so infamous it cast a shadow over his achievements in No 10. It included the industrialist Joseph Kagan, who invented Gannex, a waterproof raincoat fabric that was frequently worn by Wilson.

Blame it on the former prime ministers club. Honours lists left by PMs as they depart have long created headlines. The problem these days is that they’re coming thick and fast. In quick succession, we’ve had resignation honours lists from David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss.

The high or low point, depending on your perspective, was Boris Johnson’s. He was castigated for placing two advisers not yet 30 years of age as the youngest peers in modern times in the House of Lords. One of them, Charlotte Owen, has recently also been given a senior job at Johnson’s environmental consultancy. But there were other controversial names too. Shaun Bailey, the failed London mayoral candidate whose staff held an infamous Christmas party while lockdown restrictions were still in place, also became a lord.

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New year honours are slightly different – or at least, they are supposed to be. They are not the 15 or so people hand-picked by a given prime minister. Instead, they are meant to be the great and the good, and the underappreciated, across a much wider cross-section of British society. The process is carried out by an independent committee, separate from government.

Indeed, today’s list includes rewards for charitable dedication, such as MBEs for Gail and Jason O’Shea, both 58, from Brentwood, Essex, who were chosen for services to terminally and seriously ill children. In 18 years, they have supported more than one thousand children – raising over £1.5m for their needs.

But when politicians get rewarded, there is no such sentiment and the choice of Khan for a knighthood seems almost deliberately designed to infuriate his many detractors. Nigel Farage claimed that millions of Londoners would be “appalled” while former Tory minister for London Paul Scully said that those named as part of the honours should be “exceptional”.

You might think, with most of the new government’s term still in front of us, such controversies over honours might die down. But Rishi Sunak’s resignation honours list is still to come.