That there are some pretty detestable characters on Boris Johnson’s resignation honours list – arise Paul Dacre and Nadine Dorries – is clear enough from the fact they have still to be announced.
It took the disgraced former PM a long time to get Evgeny Lebedev’s peerage signed off and in the case of Dorries the SNP politician John Nicolson – of the influential digital, culture, media and sport committee – has chucked a spanner in the works by claiming she knowingly misled parliament when she informed his committee that Channel 4 had used actors in the reality show Tower Block of Commons, which was denied. The matter has been referred to the UK’s Commons Committee of Privileges.
Dorries has also deleted her Twitter account, which may well suggest she doesn’t think that now is the time to have people trawling through what she’s been saying over the years.
One toiler on the parliamentary estate tells me: “If there’s a sound rule of thumb where honours are concerned, it is that the longer they are taken to be approved by the authorities here, the least they are deserved.”
