BORIS Johnson sparked a mini constitutional crisis when he sought to use his resignation honours list to award peerages to sitting MPs such as Scottish Secretary Alister Jack and former culture secretary Nadine Dorries.
UK law – as Johnson well knew – does not allow an elected member of the House of Commons to concurrently sit in the unelected upper House of Lords.
Questions swirled over whether the peerage nominations would be withdrawn, deferred, or blocked altogether by Rishi Sunak, fearing the electoral test of by-elections in constituencies held by members of his Cabinet.
