Sally Allen: We need an honourable honours system

Well, at long last, Nadine Dorries has followed through on her commitment to resign her seat as an MP.
The reason, of course, is really rather shocking. She wanted and expected a peerage merely because she had supposedly done a job that the public pay her to do. In my view that is a bloody cheek. Having said that, please read her resignation letter in full.
Apart from the vitriol and hissy fit she commits to paper, she also touches on the problems in the UK today with the mandarins in Westminster totally forgetting exactly what the majority of the country voted for in the landslide for a Boris Johnson administration in 2019. We are in the most abysmal mess and there are no obvious leaders, on either side of the House, with sufficient, if any charisma to lead our poor, and getting poorer, country.
Anyway, I return to my initial subject, as discussing the political pygmies that currently represent our country gets my blood pressure soaring.
Back to the honours system. What has happened to our society and particularly the bods in the City of Westminster? It should never be someone’s right to receive an honour. It used to be reserved for people who achieved exceptional things against all the odds by effort, skill, or courage or for exemplary service over a lifetime. Now honours are given out like smarties and have therefore lost their value.
At 29, Charlotte Owen, Boris Johnson's ex-aide, became the youngest ever life peer following her inclusion on the former prime minister's honours list. As far as the now Baroness Owen is concerned, what kind of political career has earned her the honour? Even a parliamentary hairdresser who was also an adviser to Carrie Johnson was given honours for their contribution to British society, surely this calls into question the threshold to merit the ennoblement. At the moment, it has to be close to zero.
Personally, I also strongly object to Tony Blair having received any form of honour. On December 31, 2021, it was announced that the Queen had appointed Blair a Knight Companion of the Order of the Garter (KG). Blair had reportedly indicated when he left office that he did not want the traditional knighthood or peerage bestowed on former prime ministers. No, not him, he had his eyes on a greater prize!
The Most Noble Order of the Garter is an order of chivalry founded by Edward III of England in 1348. The most senior order of knighthood in the British honours system, the only decorations which outrank it in precedence are the Victoria Cross and the George Cross. How on earth could he secure this honour?
Blair received his Garter insignia on June 10, 2022 from the Queen during an audience at Windsor Castle. So, in fact he ended up with a far more important honour. Subsequently, a petition cited his role in the Iraq War as a reason to remove the knighthood and garnered more than one million signatures. Sadly, this was obviously just ignored. Why is the public always ignored?
In my view both, Blair and Goerge W Bush should have been dragged to the Hague to answer charges on war crimes. It has been proven time and again that they were both totally aware that there were no weapons of mass destruction anywhere in Iraq.
Even now, Blair through his Tony Blair Institute for Global Change and his company Tony Blair Associates, globetrots the world as a “consultant” with a lifestyle reminiscent of an old-style potentate, hardly the actions of a socialist zealot.
He represents some of the most suspect countries in the world, most with shocking human rights records. How can this self-serving former Prime Minister who was responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths be honoured in anyway at all, let alone with the Order of the Garter the highest and oldest form of Knighthood and Chivalry.
Last week, incredibly in a ground-breaking British first, Professor Richard Smith led a team of around 30 in a gruelling 17-hour marathon of surgery to transplant a womb. I have the great privilege of knowing this man quite well as he is my gynaecologist. I therefore know first-hand his passion and dedication for the last 25 years in trying to achieve this amazing breakthrough for women with no hope of ever having children.
If anyone deserves an honour, it is him. He should be ennobled to join the fertility expert Lord Winston. These men change lives for the better not for their own gain.