Signs of a vibrant and healthy parliamentary democracy in the United Kingdom are everywhere today afterTheresa May published her New Year’s Honours List for 2018.
“How did you find out about the honours list?” Mr Stone Wall, aide to the PM phoned up and demanded to know, “the list was snuck out last night while the majority of Britons were distracted by trying to work out if the leftover wedge of Christmas turkey was now too toxic to eat.”
How did you find out we found out? Is there a mole in our office? Or some other burrowing mammal? We demanded to know in return.
“Everything you do is being recorded,” the aide menaced, and then the line went dead.
The honours list includes numerous surprises, as with every year.
Chris Grayling has been knighted for services to transportation.
Jeremy Corbyn, MP for Islington North (until the next GE), has been knighted for services to Brexit. In consideration of his complete voting record of opposing anything EU related for decades, there’s no surprises there.
John Redwood knighted for services to idiocy. Of course.
But most surprising of all in the list was the inclusion of the prime minister herself.
”She’s knighted herself in the hope she’ll still vote for her Brexit deal when it comes before parliament in January,” our parliamentary correspondent observed, “although that’s a close run thing, as it’s highly likely she won’t bring her deal before parliament ever, for fear of losing the vote. In fact it’s more than likely she’ll use emergency powers to disband parliament completely.”
So she’s knighted herself for nothing?
”Not necessarily,” our correspondent observes, “no one, except perhaps Nigel Farage, and any MP who voted to trigger Article 50 without any care for what happened after, has done more in recent years in the service of traditional British xenophobia.”