Boris Johnson’s honours list is a loyalty test

Finally the day has come. After countless reports over the contents of Boris Johnson’s resignation honours list, the names are out. The Prime Minister has approved Johnson’s list. It includes a peerage for former No. 10 special adviser Charlotte Owen, who at 29 will become the youngest ever life peer. There are also knighthoods for Simon Clarke and former Tory chairman Ben Elliot. This is a slimmed down version of the original list – reported to include Johnson’s father Stanley – which officials advised the former prime minister to trim after it came in at nearly 100 names.

It is still not without controversy. The sitting MPs – Nigel Adams, Alister Jack, Nadine Dorries and Alok Sharma – tipped for peerages are absent. The expectation is they will be given peerages after they retire from the Commons so as to avoid tricky by-elections. However, Nadine Dorries has decided to spark one anyway – quitting as a Tory MP today in a parting shot to Sunak. That means a by-election in Mid Bedfordshire, which has a majority of 24,000. Any secret agreement between Johnson and Sunak to delay the peerages to avoid politically unhelpful votes could no longer be valid. Will Dorries still get a peerage? Her former Tory MP colleagues have wasted no time in kicking her out of their all-MP WhatsApp group.

As for the names on the list, they are largely made up of former aides and colleagues of Johnson and show the former prime minister rewarding loyalty above all else. The majority of MPs on the list – such as Andrea Jenkyns and Jacob Rees-Mogg – are long-time Johnson loyalists. Plenty of aides who served during partygate have made the list, including a damehood for former Head of Operations Shelly Williams Walker and OBEs for former director of communications Jack Doyle, his successor Guto Harri along with press secretary Rosie Bate Williams. Johnson’s righthand man Ross Kempsell, in his early thirties, has received a peerage while Sarah Vaughan Brown who served as an adviser to Johnson’s wife Carrie receives an OBE.

Is the list a masterclass in cronyism? Such accusations are already flowing in from Johnson’s own side. MPs have long viewed its publication as a damage limitation exercise. ‘Put it this way: it’s not going to help with any plans for a comeback,’ says a former aide of Johnson. Sunak, too, seems keen to distance himself from the whole thing – with his press secretary sharing a statement highlighting that he ‘had no involvement or input into the approved list’. The release today means that on a day when Labour backtracking on spending plans could dominate, Tory infighting and the looming by-election will likely dominate instead.

When Sunak appears at Prime Minister’s Questions next week, the list is an easy line of attack for the Labour leader. But it would have been more dangerous for Sunak – who has no mandate from the membership or voters – to block it. He could, however, still set out a different path for himself – by setting out the parameters of how he will do his own honours list when the time comes.