New Year’s Honours: it’s time to abolish embarrassing system of political rewards as Tim Martin to be knighted

It’s hard to understand how anyone would support the introduction of such a system which could see, when the list is finally announced, folk nominated by Liz Truss, who served her country into the ground over a 49-day premiership, lavished with such accolades. Frankly, if Liz Truss, a woman who cost the UK economy £30 bn and was survived by a lettuce, thinks you’ve done a good job, you probably haven’t.

The honours are ostensibly bestowed by the King, but like all other affairs of state, Charles will be nothing more than a sword waving figurehead, and has almost no say in who is rewarded for their services to the Conservative party’s balance sheet. It further perpetuates the weird class system we’ve come to love in the UK, as a man who has never had a proper job and was recently found to have profited to the tune of millions from citizens who died without a will or next of kin, will literally ask honourees to kneel before him as he patronisingly taps them on the shoulder with his dusty sword.

You also have to ask yourself what kind of company you would keep as a knight or dame of the realm. Among those given the top honour in years past were sexual predator Sir Jimmy Savile, dictators Benito Mussolini, Nicolae Ceaucescu and Robert Mugabe. It reads like a list of people you’d least want to be stuck in a lift with, rather than those given the highest honour it is possible to receive from the state.

Of course there’s some lovely sirs and dames out there too, but the very fact that so many honours have been rescinded suggests it would be simpler to stop giving them out in the first place.

Take a look at those who have refused knighthoods in the past. It’s a long list but big standout names include pop legend David Bowie, physicist Stephen Hawking, actress Glenda Jackson, and many more great thinkers, social reformers, and artists. But what would they know?

Tim Martin is the latest soon-to-be-sir. The arch Brexiteer, longtime Tory donor, and proprietor of pub chain Wetherspoons, which raised prices on food and drink since leaving the EU, despite pledging cheaper alcohol after Brexit, has already been revealed to be among those receiving a knighthood in the New Year’s Honours. Oh, and he donated £50,000 to help the Tories win the 2019 election, but I’m sure that’s just a coincidence.