I wonder if I should award myself an honour, something grand-sounding. How about Most Excellent Keeper of the Belfry? It has a nice ring about it, even if I have done nothing to deserve it. That latter consideration is of course no bar to our fossilised royal family who have this week breezily been giving themselves ludicrous sounding honours as if this were 1724, not 2024.
Camilla is now, as of yesterday, the Grand Master of the Order of the British Empire. What empire, you might ask? Rockall was Ronnie Barker’s pithy response, and that was about 40 years ago.
Kate is now a Companion of Honour, an award reserved for those who have excelled in the world of the arts, medicines, or science. Is this perhaps for creative doctoring of photographs?
The Duchess of Gloucester – there’s a household name – has been made a Member of the Order of the Garter, an Order created by the king in 1348 to reward his court favourites (while, incidentally, beyond the palace walls, much of the population was dying from the Black Death).
William has not missed out either (even if Harry has). The Prince of Wales is now Great Master of the Order of the Bath. Well it won’t wash.
The honours in themselves are absurd, and make the mythical Ruritania look like a beacon of modernity. So much for the spin from the palace that the monarchy was going to be modernised under Charles. Perhaps the latest medals are to be made from recycled precious metals?
Even more absurd, if that is possible, is the notion that the royal family can with a straight face award medals to themselves.
Take the Royal Family Order. This is awarded to female members of the royal family simply for being female. And for being a member of the royal family. Not a terribly high bar if you happen to be female and are born or marry into the family.
Then there are the military honours and decorations. Charles himself has accumulated dozens of medals, enough almost to sink one of the battleships under his command as a five star admiral. Oh, and he is also a five star general in the army and a five star air chief marshal in the RAF.
What stupendous military service or acts of bravery have led to this avalanche of medals? Well, he did captain a coastal minesweeper several decades ago for a short period. And he has only crashed a plane once.
The royals in fact have amassed between them over 100 military medals and decorations, and for what? Prince Edward, the Royal Honorary Colonel of the Royal Wessex Yeomanry, has never seen active service and even dropped out of his Royal Marines course because he couldn’t hack it.
Prince Andrew, to be fair, did merit his South Atlantic medal for service in the Falklands War. But did anyone stop to question whether it was a good idea, in 2011, when he was mired in accusations relating to his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein and serious questions were being asked about his self-serving activities as the UK’s trade ambassador, that he should be awarded the Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order, a highly prestigious award in the archaic hierarchy of these things.
This latest set of nepotistic awards makes the royal family look ridiculous, arrogant and breezily self-serving. It also illustrates graphically how our monarchy is still an imperial one, wedded to a distant past and totally out of touch with modern Britain.
Moreover, giving themselves high honours like loose change when they have done nothing to deserve them serves to cheapen the value of the honours received by those who do deserve them. What is your one medal for outstanding bravery worth when Charles can pin dozens to his chest?
The whole honours system, started in 1348, has been about patronage. This easy corruption of the ideal of merit so graphically and repeatedly shown by the royals in their own favour is consequently mirrored further down the ladder, as prime ministers hand out life peerages and knighthoods to their mates, and to those who have given their party large amounts of money.
A proper honours system which allows society to recognise outstanding achievement is very worthwhile. But we don’t have it. Those who deserve and receive honours are lost in the trivial, the corrupt and the absurd.
I am reminded of an old television advert whose punchline was: “Award yourself the CDM – Cadbury’s Dairy Milk.”
Norman Baker was the Liberal Democrat MP for Lewes from 1997 to 2015
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