Johnson's Resignation Dishonours

An Operation for Stone in the Head
Jan van Hemmesen (c.1500 - c. 1575) (follower of)
Photo Credit: Wellcome Collection [Public Domain]

Boris Johnson has put his father's name forward for a knighthood in his resignation honours list, The Times can disclose.

The former prime minister included Stanley Johnson among as many as 100 names put forward for awards...

The nominations will raise questions about Johnson's use of the honours system to reward family members with titles. He nominated his brother Jo, a former minister, for a peerage in 2020. He is now Lord Johnson of Marylebone...

The power to deny nominations lies only with Rishi Sunak... In 2021 Peter Cruddas, a former Conservative Party treasurer, joined the Lords after Johnson overruled advice not to elevate him, a precedent Johnson's allies hope the prime minister will follow...

(Lara Spirit, The Times, 2023)

Nothing strange here. All political parties reward friends, donors, advisors, supporters, etc by conferring knighthoods. Why not add family to the list?

"This  has to be the last one."So said Lord Bew, then chairman of the committee on standards in public life, of David Cameron's resignation honours list in 2016. The public outcry over Cameron's list - which included several donors to the Tory party, numerous advisors and his wife's stylist - was such that, for a moment, a repeat of this seedy political tradition seemed out of the question.

How wrong Lord Bew was. Theresa May produced her own list in 2019, and now Boris Johnson is taking his turn...

This is, to put it mildly, unattractive...

The former prime minister must realise the greatest obstacle to his return would be the public's and his party's sense that he and his government fell some way short of the standards of honesty and integrity legitimately expected of those who hold high office...

Slipping gongs to much of Westminster, and a family member, is unlikely to convince his critics that his moral character has been purified by a spell on the back benches...

Resignation honours occupy a particularly murky and malodorous corner of the British constitution...

(Times Editorial, 2023)

I love the expressions referring to these honours: "seedy political tradition", "to put it mildly, unattractive", "fell some way short of the standards of honesty and integrity legitimately expected of those who hold high office", "occupy a particularly murky and malodorous corner of the British constitution." 

Why not just say corrupt, immoral, evil, unprincipled, dishonourable?

Letters on the subject

...The present prime minister has said that he wants to put integrity at the heart of his government. It would make a strong statement if Rishi Sunak followed through on this by refusing Johnson's list and making it clear that he will also forgo the practice himself...

(Dr Catherine Haddon, Senior fellow, Institute for Government, The Times, 2023)

Sir, When Harold Wilson asked me why I refused the peerage he offered me, I conceitedly replied that I wanted to abolish the House of Lords, not strengthen it. I would not, in any case, have wanted to be in the same list as a Soviet agent and two men under investigation by the police. But at least he didn't offer an honour to any relative and his father was long dead. Each new honours list blackens the list that went before. It is a standing scandal of British politics that donors to the governing party still buy their way on to the list, but abolishing the House of Lords as a legislative chamber would go a long way towards making all titles irrelevant - and the sooner the better.

(Joe Haines, Press secretary to Harold Wilson 1969-1976, Tunbridge Wells, Kent, The Times,2023)

Sir, It is about time we abolished an honours system that has the canker of nepotism and cronyism at its heart. I am not sure what Stanley Johnson has done to deserve a knighthood apart from having the dubious honour of being the father of our last prime minister but one, but it sends a deplorable message to the brightest and best of our young people in our supposedly meritocratic society that contacts, family or the right school are the pathway to success.

(Maureen Johnson, Ilkley, W Yorks, The Times, 2023)

Sir, A knighthood for Stanley Johnson? Just when we thought that the honours system could sink no lower than Sir Gavin Williamson.

(Professor Gareth Williams, Vellow, Glos, The Times, 2023)

Could Gary Lineker be given the knighthood intended for Stanley Johnson?

(Geoff  McQuillan, Cults, Aberdeen, The Guardian, 2023)