It has been drawn to the attention of Tory grandees that flat-cap-and-whippet folk don’t get knighthoods.
People down South are twice as likely to get gongs than those in the North, and it’s getting worse.
In the latest New Year’s Honours list, one in five came from London compared with less than 3% in the North East.
Some bright spark in Whitehall pointed out this embarrassing disparity to the Prime Minister. He told officials to dish out more K’s and damehoods to the gong-starved provinces.
In particular, Sunak thinks too many honours go to middle-class rugby union, and more should go to rugby league, which somebody told him is a working-class game. What patronising sphericals! Only the posh boys of a Tory Cabinet could be so snooty.
Can’t you just hear them talking in their clerb: “I say, Quentin, old chap, don’t you think we should give this fellow Kevin Whatsisname, er, Sinfield something? Must be votes in it.”
Downing Street’s cack-handed bid to “diversify” the honours system away from the London metropolitan clique tells you everything.
Britain’s class system, supposedly abolished by John Major in 1990, and again by Tony Blair a decade later, is alive and well.
The Establishment of the well-off, well-connected, mostly southern and usually Conservative elite reward each other. For the lower orders, it’s the BEM’s rush.
It’s about time Sir (oops!) Keir Starmer summoned the nerve to abolish the exclusive, snobbish, out-dated honours system. It has no place in a modern democracy. By all means show the nation’s appreciation to those who contribute to society. But not like this.
In any case, what greater accolade could there be than playing league for Featherstone Rovers? The Tories wouldn’t understand that.
They probably think it’s a place to go shooting. Historically, striking miners.
