When handing out lifetime honours, Boris Johnson’s guiding principle has been brazen cronyism and snubbing established convention. But the most recent revelations, on the eve of MPs debating the privileges committee report into Mr Johnson’s deceit over Partygate, are jaw-dropping. On Sunday, a video emerged of Conservative staffers enjoying a 2020 Christmas “jingle and mingle” jamboree that patently broke lockdown rules. Mr Johnson must have known about this event. Yet at least two of those at the party were on his resignation honours list.
Voters care about honesty and integrity in politics. Mr Johnson does not. By waving through the list, Rishi Sunak appears either to agree with his disgraced predecessor or to be too weak to stop it. The government says it was respecting “due process” – as prime ministers routinely rubber stamp those appointments approved by peers. But Mr Johnson did not respect such norms. The manner of his departure – convicted by parliament’s highest court of lying – is unprecedented. The current prime minister is responsible for recommending honours. Mr Sunak would have been justified in refusing Mr Johnson’s list. He should have done so.
The sleaze is lapping at the door not just of Downing Street, but Buckingham Palace too. Prof Meg Russell of University College London’s Constitution Unit wrote that the Crown’s birthday honours list has been put at risk because Mr Johnson’s nominations “are seen as discrediting the titles that many of these people – and others like them in the past – have rightfully received” … “An added concern is that even Johnson’s list was officially – and necessarily – issued in the name of the King”. Prof Russell suggests that Mr Sunak has failed “to protect the monarch from being drawn into political controversy”. It’s hard to disagree.
Something is badly wrong with the way Britain is governed. Since 2010 the rewards to Conservative party donors and political friends in the form of peerages and gongs have exposed a manifest lack of legitimacy that is corroding state authority. Hoping to cast the opposition as scrupulous compared to the government, Sir Keir Starmer ruled out producing a resignation honours list of his own in future. Mr Sunak has offered no defence for what’s gone on; but instead chose to defend his inaction. There is no excuse for business as usual.
If nothing is done, Sir Keir should threaten to rescind Mr Johnson’s honours list with new legislation once in office. It is the upper house where the need is most pressing. Labour ought to implement Gordon Brown’s plans to replace the House of Lords with an elected assembly. The Conservatives are bereft of ideas, having proposed no new initiatives on Lords reform for more than 10 years.
Mr Johnson’s disreputable behaviour raises questions about how we are governed – and by whom. There’s a need to shrink a bloated upper chamber, remove the remaining hereditary peers and introduce greater quality control on appointments – beginning with the prime minister’s resignation honours list. Creating a mechanism that recognises the public interest in the matter of patronage and can prevent its crudest manifestation is – or at least should be – the order of the day.
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