Boris’s resignation honours are the latest in more than 100 years of corruption and cronyism

Somewhat charmingly, the Cabinet Office has a website in which it invites people to “nominate someone amazing for a national honour”. The honours system, the site tells us, “Celebrates the people who go above and beyond to change the world around them for the better”. These are people, the Cabinet Office claims, who have “gained the respect of their peers” and “displayed moral and physical courage”.

You do not have to be immensely cynical to find it hard to reconcile the stated purpose of the honours system with how it works in reality. Take, for example, the honours list of Boris Johnson, who resigned on Friday in a manner that can described as considerably less than “honourable”, let alone “amazing”. Like the former PM himself, whose departure along with two of his allies has already triggered three by-elections and created an enormous headache for his party, it is difficult when looking at his list to find the “respect”, “morality”, and certainly “courage”.

In truth, the honours system is as broken as just about every other system in this country, and it has been for more than a century. Far from being a mechanism to reward the “amazing”, it instead gives defunct prime ministers the ability to dole out the ermine robes to their biggest toadies, and to give gongs to those who have given them sacksful of cash. Fundamentally, it is a reward system for those with the very brownest of noses.

Most historians agree that the rot started 101 years ago, with the resignation honours list of David Lloyd George, who was accused of simply having sold honours as brazenly as a market stall greengrocer. His agent for this enterprise was a shady theatrical producer with the unlikely name of Maundy Gregory, who charged £10,000 – worth some £600,000 today – for a knighthood and £40,000 – nearly £2.5 million – for a baronetcy.

The whole affair smelled so bad that the Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act was passed in 1925, although Gregory was to continue hawking his wares to those desperate for a coronet or a K. In 1933, he was found guilty under the new Act, and was imprisoned for two months and fined £50 – about £3,500 today.

And then there was the “Lavender List” which, despite sounding like the membership roster for some society of clandestine deviants, was, in fact, the name popularly given to Harold Wilson’s controversial resignation honours list, which was apparently drafted by his aide Marcia Williams – later to be Lady Falkender – who some maintained was Wilson’s mistress.

Named after the colour of the paper on which she wrote it, the lavender list was problematic not least because it was felt that Williams was overly influential in its drafting, but also because so many of those on it seemed so unworthy.

One of them was Eric Miller, whose property companies were widely thought at the time to be as dodgy as hell. All that mattered was that he was a Labour Party donor, and that ensured he got a nice knighthood. It surprised nobody that a year later that the fraud squad were on to him, and Sir Eric would shoot himself in September 1977.

Then there was businessman Joseph Kagan, who had made a fortune from the waterproof material Gannex that was used to make the trademark raincoats worn by Harold Wilson. Kagan got put into the Lords, and just four years later, he was found guilty of theft and got put into prison.

Although Wilson was out of office when the scandal erupted, one of his successors as a Labour prime minister would find himself in boilingly hot water over handing out honours when he was still at Number 10.  In 2006, Tony Blair was questioned by the police, who were investigating whether his nomination of four stinkingly rich businessmen for peerages had in fact broken the law.

The rat was smelt when it was revealed that the four men had donated £5 million to the Labour Party, and it very much looked to many that Blair was simply doing a Lloyd George. Over 130 people were questioned, with Labour’s chief fundraiser, Lord Levy, even being arrested for conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. Ultimately, no charges were ever brought, but the four men were never to get their seats in Lords, which must have made them feel like their millions were somewhat wasted.

David Cameron’s resignation list in 2016 would set the tone, which was copied by Boris Johnson on Friday: reward just about everybody who ever walked through the front door of Number 10, including (almost) the cat. It seemed that every assistant changer of light bulbs was given an MBE, with even the prime minister’s wife’s stylist given an OBE.

However, it is not just gongs given by outgoing prime ministers that have raised eyebrows, but also those given – in the past – by the incoming king. In 2016, the then-Prince Charles gave a CBE to a billionaire businessman called Mahfouz Marei Mubarak bin Mahfouz. When it emerged that the Saudi had donated millions to some of Charles’s pet restoration projects, it very much looked like another case of dosh for gongs.

The man currently in the spotlight for arranging things is Charles’s former aide Michael Fawcett, although it should be stressed that the Crown Prosecution Service, despite indicating that it would make a decision at the end of last year, has still not announced whether it intends to take Fawcett to court.

Ultimately, the more scandal that gets attached to the honours system, and the dirtier the whole shameful thing becomes, the less desirable honours will become.

Guy Walters is a British author, historian, and journalist