Liz Truss gives peerages to Brexit architect and
Tory donor
Ousted prime minister allowed a resignation honours
list despite lasting just 49 days in Downing Street
Rowena
Mason Whitehall editor
Fri 29 Dec
2023 22.30 GMT
Ousted
prime minister Liz Truss has been allowed to confer a host of honours and three
new peerages – including for one of the architects of Brexit, for a Tory donor
and for her former deputy chief of staff.
Truss was
granted a “resignation honours” list by Rishi Sunak, despite having to resign
from No 10 after only 49 days because of turmoil in the financial markets
caused by her chancellor’s mini-budget.
She was
given the privilege of choosing three new lawmakers for the House of Lords:
Matthew Elliott, who helped set up the Vote Leave campaign; Jon Moynihan, a
businessman, party donor and chair of Vote Leave; and Ruth Porter, her former
deputy chief of staff.
Moynihan
has given about £700,000 to the Conservatives, Vote Leave and Truss’s own
leadership campaign altogether.
The Truss
lists also includes damehoods for Shirley Conran, of the Maths Anxiety Trust,
and for Tory MP Jackie Doyle-Price, plus a knighthood for Tory MP Alec
Shelbrooke.
Former
Truss advisers Shabbir Merali and Sophie Jarvis will get CBEs, while Tory MPs
Rob Butler and Suzanne Webb will get OBEs. David Hills, chair of the
Conservative association in South West Norfolk, Truss’s constituency, gets an
MBE.
Sunak had
been urged to block Truss’s honours list, with the shadow Cabinet Office
minister, Jonathan Ashworth, saying: “This list is proof positive of Rishi
Sunak’s weakness and a slap in the face to working people who are paying the
price of the Tories crashing the economy.
Ruth
Porter, former special adviser to Liz Truss, receives a peerage.Ruth Porter,
former special adviser to Liz Truss, also receives a peerage.
“Honours should be for those committed to public
service, not rewards for Tory failure.
“Rather
than apologise for crashing the economy and driving up mortgage rates, costing
families thousands, Rishi Sunak has nodded through these tarnished gongs
because he is too weak to lead a Tory party completely out of touch with
working people.”
A
government source said: “Every past Labour prime minister has issued a
dissolution or resignation list – this is a longstanding and ongoing
convention. The convention is the incumbent prime minister does not block the
political peerage proposals of others.”
Sunak has
had the list for many weeks but it was only sent out late on Friday afternoon
to coincide with his own new year honours list – a move that prompted
accusations he was trying to bury bad news.
Daisy
Cooper, deputy Liberal Democrat leader, said the “shameless move to reward Liz
Truss’s car-crash cronies is matched only by Sunak’s weakness in failing to
block it”.
She added:
“Truss handing out gongs after blowing a hole in the public finances and
leaving families reeling from spiralling mortgage costs calls this whole
honours system into disrepute.
“The
honours system should celebrate hard-working people who have achieved great
things; sullying this celebration shows just how out of touch this Conservative
government really is.”
Truss said
she was “delighted these champions for the conservative causes of freedom,
limited government and a proud and sovereign Britain have been suitably
honoured”.
In June,
Sunak also attracted criticism for having approved Boris Johnson’s resignation
honours list, which contained more than 40 names, despite the parliamentary
inquiry into whether the former prime minister misled the Commons.
Hours
before Johnson announced he was quitting as an MP, accusing the investigation
of trying to “drive him out”, his honours list was published.
Awards went
to Johnson’s closest aides from the Covid era including an Order of the Bath
for his former principal private secretary Martin Reynolds, who oversaw a
garden party during lockdown restrictions in 2020.
Johnson’s
list also made Charlotte Owen, a 30-year-old former aide, the youngest life
peer in the upper house.
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