Cold medals
New Year honours , Issue 1666 ACCORDING to Keir Starmer, the New Year's honours recognise people "who put the common good ahead of themselves to strengthen communities" with "quiet dedication" – yet higher awards went to party hacks and poorly performing executives…

Party favours
"Honours should be for those committed to public service, not rewards for Tory failure," said Jonathan Ashworth in 2023, attacking the "tarnished gongs" of Liz Truss's resignation list. Now Ashworth accepts a CBE, having failed to get re-elected as a Labour MP in 2024, losing his Leicester South seat to Gaza independent Shockat Adam. Ashworth was rewarded for that failure with leadership of key Starmerite group Labour Together, which he ran so badly he left after a year.

Another tarnished gong goes to former Labour minister Anneliese Dodds, who in 2022 attacked Boris Johnson's resignation honours list as a "catalogue of Conservative cronies". Now Dodds is an entry in the Labour crony catalogue, with a DBE that looks like party management.

The former shadow chancellor became a mere development minister in government, resigning last February after Starmer imposed a cut in aid spending. Now the PM needs to rebuild bridges, and Dodds's damehood lets him do so without giving the party's "soft left" any real power.

Meanwhile, the ghost of New Labour can still be haunting both Starmer and the awards. Blairite MP turned V&A boss Tristram Hunt nets a knighthood, while Kate Garvey gets an OBE for "political service", referring to her aide work for Blair back in 2005.

Once upon a time, the Lib Dems had a pretty solid record seeing their party treasurers (aka fundraisers-in-chief) turn up in the House of Lords – as Lords Clement-Jones, Razzall and Wrigglesworth can attest. So pity Tilly McAuliffe, treasurer for nearly five years, who has had to make do with a mere CBE "for parliamentary and political service".

At least she hasn't had to wait as long as Peter Dunphy, the party's registered treasurer during the coalition years. Known for his largesse towards the Lib Dems, donor Dunphy finally gets an MBE for "services to amenity conservation and to volunteering" in his role as an Independent City of London Corporation councillor. Dunphy, first elected to Cornhill ward in 2009, gifted the party £152,000 over several years, either personally or through one of his firms. Lib Dem leader Ed Davey congratulated him on his gong, "recognising years of voluntary service in our party and beyond".

Executive derision
Top bosses also receive rewards regardless of performance. Gary Hoffman, chairman of Monzo bank, gets a CBE for services to the economy and to sport, because Labour wants to encourage fintech. In July, Monzo was fined £21m for "inadequate anti-financial crime" systems under his leadership. Hoffman stood down as chairman of the Premier League in 2022, following outrage over the way it allowed Saudi Arabian interests to take over Newcastle United FC.

The Starmer government's love-in with the City also produced a CBE for EY's head of financial services, and chair of lobby group TheCityUK, Omar Ali. Ali has run EY's UK (and now global) financial services practice since 2015, during which period the firm's standout contribution in the sector has been the duff auditing of investment scam company London Capital & Finance plc, in which investors lost more than £200m in 2019, and for which EY was fined £4m by beancounting regulators in 2024.

Local colours
Lambeth council Labour leader Claire Holland's OBE for services to local government does nothing to dispel suspicions about the gongs' political nature. Holland, who is on Labour's national executive committee, has been leader since 2021 but has not fixed Lambeth's disastrous finances. Lambeth reported a £60.5m overspend in 2025 and got a £40m government bailout for its dysfunctional Housing Revenue Account.

Taxpayers in Croydon, meanwhile, are bemused by the CBE for services to children, young people and families awarded to Debbie Jones, until recently "interim" executive director for children, families and education services. Local government veteran Jones, 70 when she arrived in 2020 amid Croydon's financial collapse, joined on an "interim" pay rate of £800 per day, eventually announcing her departure in 2024.

In a previous similar role at Tower Hamlets in 2015, she was in charge when teenagers Shamima Begum, Amira Abase and Kadiza Sultana were radicalised and escaped to Syria to become "jihadi brides".

Knight courses
Just weeks after University of Leicester staff and students voted that they had no confidence in vice-chancellor Professor Nishan Canagarajah, after a swathe of cuts and course closures, he was awarded a knighthood in recognition of his services to higher education.

Prof Canagarajah is presiding over the closure of modern languages teaching and film studies at Leicester, cuts to history and a weird "reimagining" of chemistry and geography into one department, leaving both subjects depleted of expertise (Eye 1664).