Michael Gove has been awarded a peerage by Rishi Sunak in a resignation honours list described by opposition parties as an “ID parade of political flunkies”.
The veteran Conservative politician and editor of the Spectator, who retired as an MP at the last election, was one of seven allies of Sunak to receive peerages on Friday afternoon. His ennoblement opens the door to a potential return to Conservative politics in the future.
Others given seats in the House of Lords include Mark Harper, the former transport secretary, and Simon Hart, the former chief whip.
Hart sent shockwaves through Westminster earlier this year with the publication of his memoirs, which lifted the lid on the sexual misadventures of Tory MPs and infighting during the Johnson and Sunak governments.
The list includes Alister Jack, the former Scotland secretary who admitted placing three bets on the date of the 2024 general election, and Eleanor Shawcross, who was head of the No 10 policy unit under Sunak.
Shawcross is the daughter of Sir William Shawcross, the commissioner for public appointments, and is married to Simon Wolfson, the chief executive of Next, who is also a Conservative peer.
The former attorney general Victoria Prentis and former chief executive of the Conservative party Stephen Massey will also receive peerages.
Several other former Conservative cabinet ministers have been given knighthoods. They include Jeremy Hunt, who was chancellor in Sunak’s cabinet, and James Cleverly, who served as foreign secretary and home secretary and ran for the Tory leadership last year.
Grant Shapps, the former transport and defence secretary, and Mel Stride, the shadow chancellor and former work and pensions secretary, were also given knighthoods. Theresa Villiers, the former environment secretary, was given a damehood.
Daisy Cooper, the deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats, dismissed Sunak’s nominations as “an ID parade of political flunkies whose fingerprint of failure are still felt on family finances”.
“They are rewards for the failure of a dreadful Conservative government that was rightly kicked out of office,” she said. “The fact that Rishi Sunak has dished out honours to his mates after all the damage they did is yet more proof of how out of touch the Conservatives still are.”
Darren Hughes, chief executive of the Electoral Reform Society, said Sunak’s list meant that the last three Conservative prime ministers “shovelled over 140 new peers in total into the House of Lords”.
“The public is again witnessing the spectacle of a former prime minister stuffing even more friends and allies into the already ludicrously bloated House of Lords – handing each one a job for life in Parliament,” Hughes said. “At over 800 members, the Lords is already the second largest legislative chamber in the world after China’s National People’s Congress.”
The former England cricketer Jimmy Anderson, who retired from international cricket in July having taken more wickets than any fast bowler in Test history, and the film-maker Matthew Vaughn, a longstanding Conservative supporter, were also on the list of knighthoods.
More than a dozen former aides to Sunak in Downing Street were given lower-ranking honours, including Nerissa Chesterfield, who worked as No 10’s director of communications, Will Tanner and Rupert Yorke, who were deputy chiefs of staff, Lucy Noakes, who was press secretary and Jamie Njoku-Goodwin, who was director of strategy.
A handful of Sunak’s political allies, including his former chief of staff Liam Booth-Smith and former deputy prime minister Oliver Dowden, received honours when parliament was dissolved for the general election last summer.
Gove, who ran for the Tory leadership in 2016, was an education secretary, environment secretary and housing secretary, but never held a great office of state.
He was a central character in the Tory drama that consumed the final days of Boris Johnson’s government. In one of his last acts as prime minister in July 2022, Johnson sacked Gove in what was seen as an act of revenge for derailing his 2016 leadership campaign.
