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| Sunak approves Boris Johnson honours list including aides linked to Partygate | Sunak approves Boris Johnson honours list including aides linked to Partygate |
| (32 minutes later) | |
| PM gives green light to list that also includes knighthood for Jacob Rees-Mogg and damehood for Priti Patel | PM gives green light to list that also includes knighthood for Jacob Rees-Mogg and damehood for Priti Patel |
| Rishi Sunak has approved Boris Johnson’s resignation honours list of peerages and other awards for his allies, despite continuing police and parliamentary inquiries into the former prime minister over Partygate. | Rishi Sunak has approved Boris Johnson’s resignation honours list of peerages and other awards for his allies, despite continuing police and parliamentary inquiries into the former prime minister over Partygate. |
| Johnson’s list gave honours to some of his aides who were most closely associated with the Partygate scandal, including an Order of the Bath for his former principal private secretary Martin Reynolds, who oversaw a garden party during Covid restrictions in 2020. | |
| He also gave a peerage to his chief of staff, Dan Rosenfield, and a CBE to Jack Doyle, his former director of communications, both of whom were in office during some of the Partygate era of rule-breaking within No 10 and the investigations into the scandal. | |
| Sunak left two current MPs, Nadine Dorries and Alok Sharma, off the list of peerages in order to avoid potentially disastrous byelections for the Conservatives. But Dorries, the former culture secretary, announced earlier on Friday that she was standing down as an MP with immediate effect. | |
| Johnson’s proposal of a knighthood for his father, Stanley, was also vetoed. | |
| However, almost 40 honours and seven peerages made it through the vetting process. Two political aides, Ross Kempsell and Charlotte Owen, were put forward for peerages and will be two of the youngest members of the House of Lords. | |
| Johnson also gave a knighthood to Ben Elliot, the former chair of the Conservative party, and Jacob Rees-Mogg, while his former home secretary, Priti Patel, received a damehood. | |
| Shaun Bailey, the former London mayoral candidate, also received a peerage, along with Johnson’s long-term aide Ben Gascoigne, and a former City Hall adviser Kulveer Ranger. | |
| Ray Lewis, a former deputy mayor of London who resigned following a Guardian investigation into his conduct, was made a CBE. Other aides to get honours included the former communications director Guto Harri, who has launched a tell-all podcast-memoir about his time in No 10, Johnson’s personal assistant, Ann Sindall, who is to be made a dame and a longstanding House of Commons hairdresser Kelly-Jo Dodge who gets an OBE. | |
| Sunak faced criticism for allowing Johnson’s list despite the police investigating fresh claims of lawbreaking gatherings at Chequers during Covid restrictions. | |
| There is also an inquiry by the privileges committee into whether Johnson misled parliament when he said all Covid rules were followed in Downing Street, which turned out not to have been the case. | There is also an inquiry by the privileges committee into whether Johnson misled parliament when he said all Covid rules were followed in Downing Street, which turned out not to have been the case. |