Johnson’s 2020 Honours List. ‘Old Corruption’ takes back control
Newspaper reports earlier in February indicated that Boris Johnson’s latest honours list- relating to the December 2019 Election- recommends Peerages for a number of people prominently involved in Vote Leave and/or his Election campaign. Also in the frame for elevation are a number of Tory MPs who were purged by Johnson for not supporting the line on Brexit including Hammond and Clarke. The draft list has to be scrutinised by a committee so we’ll know more at some point on if any are vetoed.
The list also reportedly contains a couple of obscure former backbench Labour MPs who backed Johnson on 12th December.
Quite rightly an Honours list consisting of Johnson’s cronies and people he ‘owes’ has come in for robust criticism already.
Sir Alistair Graham, a former chairman of the committee on standards in public life, said: “I have concerns about the sheer scale of the list. We have now got a second parliamentary chamber with over 800 people. It is just ridiculous, particularly when it is very often filled with retired politicians or people who have donated to political parties. It looks as though you can buy your way into the Lords. It is a national scandal.” The Times 8th February
William Cobbett a writer and farmer was a radical Tory who strongly criticised what he saw as the Old Corruption of the political system before the 1832 Reform Act.
He strongly disliked the power of patronage in the system, people who held well paid positions in Government and other official structures not on merit or competence, and certainly not because they were elected, but rather because of who they were or who they knew.
In his Rural Rides, Cobbett criticised ‘pensions, sinecures, tithes and the other ‘glorious institutions’ of this ‘mighty empire’. He referred to this collectively as The Thing.
Cobbett was might well have recognised the Tory Party of 2020 as strangely familiar
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