BACK in 2023, Alister Jack, the most useless Scotland Secretary before the current one, denied reports that he'd done a sleazy back-room deal with then Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to avoid a by-election which would have been politically difficult for the Tories.
Jack had been nominated for a peerage for services to aristocratic arrogance by Boris Johnson in his now infamous resignation dishonours list. In that same list, Johnson gave peerages to his father, Tory donors, MPs who had been loyal to him, and to two young aides whose elevation to the peerage raised eyebrows as they had not accomplished anything of note. Honours lists always smell bad; this one stank worse than one of those rivers that the English private water companies pump full of raw sewage.
The original plan had been for Jack to accept the peerage but to remain as an MP and not to take up his seat in the Lords until after the general election, when he'd already signalled his intention to step down.
READ MORE: Rishi Sunak's resignation honours released – see the full list
However, the House of Lords Appointments Commission advised the Cabinet Office that doing so would be constitutionally improper. Jack then had a meeting with Rishi Sunak, after which he announced that he would be declining the nomination made by Johnson and remaining an MP until after the general election. This announcement led to widespread suspicions that Jack had done a deal with Sunak to turn down Johnson's offer of a peerage and remain as an MP until the general election, and then Sunak would nominate him for a peerage.
SNP MP Mhairi Black said at the time: said: "Alister Jack must come clean on whether he's done a sleazy backroom deal with Rishi Sunak to delay his peerage in order to avoid another by-election defeat for the Tories."
It's now clear that Jack did indeed do a sleazy backroom deal as Sunak's resignation honours list will include a peerage for Jack, and for notorious Tory sleaze bag Michael Gove, the latter for services to swaying besottedly in the chamber of the Commons while doing a fine impression of being out of his gourd.
Apart from his admission that he had been partial to Bolivian marching powder, Gove is best known for the remarkable achievement of being the slimiest and most oleaginous Tory MP in history, a man who believes that outrageous lies and deceit are perfectly fine as long as you are Uriah Heep like in your politeness. He was also involved in one political scandal after another, including being up to his neck in the previous government's so-called VIP lane for PPE contracts during the covid pandemic.
Sunak's full honours list was published on Friday. We really need to stop calling this exercise in political cronyism an honours list. There's nothing honourable about it. No matter how much they try to disguise things with an MBE for an 80-year-old school dinner lady, this is a sleazy cronies' list, a dishonours list.
The SNP's depute leader at Westminster, Pete Wishart, said that honours for Jack and Gove would be “one last slap in the face to the people of Scotland from Rishi Sunak”.
He added: "While Alister Jack and Michael Gove settle into their cushy ‘jobs’ for life safe, unaccountable to voters, people across Scotland are still suffering the effects of fourteen years of Tory rule."
Labour had previously promised to abolish the House of Lords, something they have been promising for over 100 years, but this was yet another of Starmer's broken promises, instead of abolishing the unelected upper chamber and replacing it with an elected chamber, he is making some minor changes to the Lords, removing the 92 hereditary peers who still remain in the Lords.
Starmer has shown himself just as willing to abuse the dishonours system as any Tory MP before him, doling out peerages to his former chief of staff Sue Gray and Scottish political has-beens Wendy Alexander and Magrit Curran. Like PMs before him, Starmer is too wedded to the power of patronage given to him by the current system and has no desire to give that power up.
Wishart said: “Sir Keir Starmer promised to scrap the Lords, but since winning power he has wasted no time signing up to the worst of Westminster ways, handing out a peerage to his former chief of staff Sue Gray and ushering in a host of Labour MPs who lost their seats at the election back into parliament via the unelected Lords.
“The unaccountable, undemocratic House of Lords and the crony ridden honours system which props it up is broken beyond repair and it is clear that it benefits the Labour Party and the Tories far too much for them to have any desire to change it.
“We are absolutely clear the House of Lords should be scrapped and that Scotland deserves better than Westminster ‘democracy’ that's rigged with cronyism and elitism – it's no wonder so many Scots are asking how and when we can leave it.
"While Labour Party and Tory MPs answer to an undemocratic, broken Westminster system, SNP MPs answer to the people of Scotland."
He added that that honours for Jack and Gove would be “one last slap in the face to the people of Scotland from Rishi Sunak”.
Scottish Greens co-leader Lorna Slater also attacked the nominations for peerages, saying: "Michael Gove and Alister Jack both supported and implemented policies that did a huge amount of damage, from a Brexit that has cost jobs and hiked up prices to the hostile environment policies that punished refugees and a series of cuts that fell on people with the least."
She added that the Lords’ “very existence is an affront to democracy”. It's the zombie chamber, where politicians rejected by the electorate continue to exercise their influence on public policy and legislation from beyond the political grave.
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