They are expected to be among more than 50 new peers, including around 40 Tories, who will be named this week along with a list announcing other honours.
The list is thought to include knighthoods for former Lib Dem ministers Vince Cable and Danny Alexander, who are reported to have turned down peerages.
The pair, who both lost their seats at the election, will be nominated for the gongs when the post-election honours list is published.
Both are thought to have turned down the chance of becoming members of the House of Lords.
The raft of gongs for former political figures will spark criticism that the honours system is being used by political leaders as a reward for failed politicians kicked out by the voters.
That’s what the dissolution honours list is for. So, using it to do this doesn’t sound all that awful really.
Now, you see, I was no great supporter of Cable as SoS at BIS. He’s way to the left of the LibDems (and has all of their other faults) and really, really doesn’t understand business well enough for that post. As was shown during the last government.
However, as another conviction politician (and not in the expenses or the Eric-the-Boxer senses), he’d probably have made a decent addition to the Lords.
Alexander, on the other hand, meh …
I’d also point out that politicians tend to get to be awarded Knight Bachelor, unless there is a specific reason that they get an honour, therefore it isn’t really a gong*.
Yes, I know that you can buy a Knight Bachelor badge to wear on your uniform, if you have one, but that is hardly the same as, say, a KBE, where you get issued both the neck decoration and the breast badge.
Cable was one of the many plonkers in the Westminster village who backed more bank lending in one breath, and deplored excess private debts in the next. (For the benefit of any readers who don’t see the contradiction, every £ of bank lending is a £ of debt).
Indeed – being on the left of the Lib Dems does imply a degree of economic ignorance only surpassed by the genuine weirdos at either end of the left / right spectrum.
However, and I appreciate it may be considered heresy in this forum, economics isn’t actually “everything”. Even if you believe Krugman.
We need more pendantry in the HoL (and more brevity in the Parliamentary Draughtsman’s office.) As we have problems actually getting human beings (rather than Oxbridge PP&E lizard people) in to the HoC …
They’ll need yo build an extension to the chamber soon.
I can understand Danny boy turning down a peerage, he has a life in front of him, I’m surprised at Vince though. There’s very little call for a dismal practitioner of the dismal science, and a comfortable existence at £300 per diem + expenses must have had a siren call.
Danny Alexander’s knighthood is pleasing for those of us in Scotland to see the Nats wound up (talk of ‘outrage’ – manufactured, natch- on the front of the SNP fanzine, The National this morning)
Top trolling there Cameron
Dr Cromarty:
Yes, it’s worth it for that alone. I think the Michelle Mone peerage may be going a bit far, but I don’t think she’s any worse than many others in the HoL and the outrage is amusing.
Come the revolution, when Jeremy Corbyn is Prime Minister, the old corrupt House of Lords will be replaced by an entirely objective bloke in a garden shed in Downham Market.
Funnily enough, a friend of mine has been tipped the wink that he is to be ennobled soon and jealousy was my main reaction.
To be honest, if someone wants to give me £300 a day plus expenses, decent subsidised food and a good wine list to go to a nice club and read books, natter with some interesting folks and be in striking distance of some places of interest, I’m up for it.
My wife would find it vulgar, but it would suit me down to the ground.
@ Interested
I’ld jump at the chance – when I was a kid the House of Lords comprised hereditary peers, most of whom had inherited enough wealth that they didn’t need to work for a living and quite a lot of brains (the girls who managed to marry into ancient peerages weren’t often stupid) so periodically a peer turned up to address a subject on which he had become a world expert.
Blow the money! – “what will you do when you retire?” – I’ll go the HoL and listen to these super-geeks.
No, I cannot listen to Lord David Cecil ‘cos he had an elder brother “Bobbety” Salisbury, but anyone who thinks Salisbury was anti-intellectual should reflect that he was Lord David Cecil’s big brother: his “to clever by half” condemnation of Iain MacLeod was based on the fact that someone could falsely accuse MacLeod of cheating – unthinkable to a gentleman.