Boris Johnson’s political honours list has seen peerages awarded to a string of former Tory MPs and other allies and party donors – although not to Paul Dacre, the former editor of the Daily Mail.
Dacre had been widely tipped to be made a peer, but there had been calls for this to be delayed or suspended after legal action begun by a series of prominent people over alleged intrusion into privacy by the Mail’s publisher.
There were also reported doubts about the honour for Dacre within the House of Lords Appointments Commission (Holac), which vets nominations.
Johnson has nonetheless created 13 new Conservative peers, among them former MPs including Nicholas Soames and Hugo Swire, plus Michael Hintze, a financier and businessman who has previously donated to the party.
Other new Tory peers include the historian Andrew Roberts, plus Tony Sewell and Dambisa Moyo, two key members of the team which produced a Johnson-commissioned report on ethnic inequalities which was heavily condemned for a divisive approach, sometimes poor research and a neglect of structural factors.
This list is separate to Johnson’s still-to-come resignation honours, where it has been predicted he could elevate a series of loyal Conservative MPs and other allies.
Labour nominated eight new peers, including Tom Watson, the party’s former deputy leader. In 2020, Holac is understood to have turned down a nomination for Watson by the former leader Jeremy Corbyn, with reports suggesting concerns about Watson’s role in seeking action over allegations of sexual abuse made by the serial fantasist Carl Beech.
Other Labour peers include Frances O’Grady, the outgoing head of the Trades Union Congress, Dave Prentis, formerly head of the Unison union, and the former Stoke MP Ruth Smeeth.
Among the new non-affiliated peers will be Arlene Foster, the former DUP leader and first minister of Northern Ireland.
In a separate, smaller list of other political honours knighthoods go to three Conservative MPs close to Johnson: Jake Berry, the influential northern MP who is now the Tory party chair under Truss; John Whittingdale, formerly the culture secretary; and James Duddridge, who was formerly Johnson’s parliamentary private secretary.
Last week Chris Bryant, the Labour MP and chair of the Commons standards committee, suggested a delay to any peerage for Dacre after people including Doreen Lawrence, Prince Harry and Elton John began action against the Mail group over alleged misuse of their private information.
Johnson has a track record of creating large numbers of peers from friends, supporters, donors and even close relatives, despite efforts by House of Lords authorities to reduce membership of the 750-plus strong chamber, the second-biggest legislative chamber in the world after China’s National People’s Congress.
In 2020, among peers created by Johnson were Evgeny Lebedev, the Russian-born billionaire newspaper proprietor and friend of the prime minister, plus Johnson’s own brother Jo. Other peers included Johnson’s adviser Edward Lister, and a series of well-known Brexiters, including the former England cricketer Ian Botham and the Brexit-backing former Labour MPs Kate Hoey, Ian Austin and Gisela Stuart.
That list also saw peerages for the former chancellors Philip Hammond and Ken Clarke, who had been stripped of the Tory whip in the Commons for rebelling over Brexit. Soames, elevated in the new list, also lost the whip but had it restored before he quit the Commons at the 2019 election.
