UK Prime Minister Sunak Slams Boris Johnson Over Honours List Issue

It was “something I wasn’t prepared to do,” British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said on Monday in response to previous premier Boris Johnson’s request for him to override a committee reviewing his nominations to the House of Lords.

The British-Indian leader’s remark at a formal event was a result of a protracted disagreement over Johnson’s honours list, especially the list of persons he wished to bestow peerages on.

Nine months after Johnson’s resignation as prime minister, the long-awaited list of his honours, which contained 38 honours and seven peerages, was finally accepted. Outgoing prime ministers have a custom of nominating individuals for awards on the resignation honours list.

 

Johnson has the authority to propose candidates for House of Lords seats and other awards like knighthoods as a leaving prime minister.

 

Conventionally, the House of Lords Appointments Commission (HOLAC) receives the list of candidates from the incumbent prime minister.

 

Many of the candidates put out by the previous leader of the Conservative party were absent from the list of new peers. Johnson abruptly resigned as an MP Friday night only three hours after it was published and vehemently criticised Sunak’s agenda.

 

Sunak accused Johnson of requesting that he override the House of Lords Appointment Commission and approve the rejected candidates in his first public comment to the controversy on Monday.

 

Johnson allegedly instructed Sunak to disregard their advice or “make promises to people”

 

Sunak, however, said he declined and remarked, “Something I wasn’t prepared to do.”

 

“I didn’t believe that was proper, and I wasn’t ready to do it. And if people don’t like it, then, tough,” he said in London at a tech conference.

 

The BBC said that the intervention represents a turning moment in a verbal brawl over Johnson’s contentious list of resignation honours.

 

Johnson, 58, left a list of nominees for Damehoods, Knighthoods, and other honours along with names of persons he wished to give seats in the chamber of Lords, the UK Parliament’s lower chamber.

 

The House of Lords Appointments Commission received the list from the administration as is customary.

 

Three currently serving MPs, Nadine Dorries, Nigel Adams, and Alok Sharma, were reportedly on the list, along with a few other perhaps contentious individuals.

 

In order to prevent by-elections for the Conservatives, no sitting MPs were conferred peerages.

 

After being informed by a parliamentary committee that he will be punished for misrepresenting Parliament about lockdown-breaking parties at Downing Street during his premiership, Johnson unexpectedly resigned from his position as a legislator on Friday. Johnson said he was the “victim of a witch-hunt” and was the “victim of a witch-hunt.”

 

He made the choice to leave his position as a member of parliament after receiving a private letter from the important issue from the MP-led Privileges Committee.