Has Boris Johnson really nominated his dad for a knighthood

Few, none who I know anyway, would expect a knighthood but then few families are like the Johnsons.

Stanley, who has been an MEP and is an author but is probably most famous for appearing on I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here, has been reportedly included in his son Boris’s 100-strong list of nominations for honours as his parting shot as Prime Minister.

READ MORE: SNP candidates fall out in first TV debate for party leadership

Honours like knighthoods are usually given for services to charity, sport, community or business. So, we can wonder what Boris will put on the form when nominating his pater for the gong.

Is it a thank you for passing on the mop of blond hair that has become a Johnson trademark?

Or for sending him to Eton where he honed his social skills and made the connections that allowed him to climb the greasy pole to reach the pinnacle of political high office in the UK.

Maybe it’s for inheriting his attitude towards women or his views on ethnic minorities.

You don’t have to search too far if you are looking for similarities and you can make up your own mind about how far the apple has fallen from the tree.

The idea that an outgoing Prime Minister would nominate his own father for a knighthood is another in the list of shameless acts of self-interest that has characterised Boris Johnson’s whole career.

READ MORE: The partygate inquiry: The key questions facing Boris Johnson

We have reached the point where no-one is really surprised by it. Boris Johnson has normalised the outrageous.

So, who else is on Boris’s thank-you and bye-bye list?

As well as the ‘this one is for being my dad’, there is reportedly an honour for Boris devotee extraordinaire, Tory MP Nadine Dorries.

Services to the Boris Johnson Fan Club perhaps, answering letters and sending out signed photos and shiny badges to those with the same affliction.

Another name is reportedly Shaun Baillie, a Downing Street aide during Johnson’s time, who was at the centre of the Number 10 lockdown party scandal.

Services to the economy for helping keep the local off-sales in business by sending out for suitcases full of wine, perhaps?

The names reportedly on the list for knighthoods, damehoods and peerages - given a lifetime seat in the House of Lords - is one of cronies, supporters, donors and 'anyone else who knows me' type of thing that further taints an already discredited system of patronage.

Many, probably most, countries have some form of honours system.

The USA has medals awarded by the president with the Presidential Medal of Freedom the highest.

Recipients include the Apollo 11 astronauts, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins and sporting heroes Muhammad Ali and Joe DiMaggio as well as a number of political and diplomatic figures.

France has its National Orders with the Legion d’honneur the highest award.

There will no doubt be controversies in these countries and others, but the system in the UK has become so flooded with nominations that are questionable that it brings the whole process into disrepute.

There are thousands of people in many fields in the UK who have deservedly been given an honour of some sort.

It is usually for a lifetime of dedicated service to others or to their community where they have not seen any real personal financial or material gain.

Others have achieved excellence in areas like sport or the arts and whose endeavours have inspired the next generation.

Some are genuinely recognised for business excellence, creating and sustaining jobs and genuinely being an asset to the country.

Each time there is a list there are many people in Glasgow who are made MBEs, for example, who genuinely never expected such an honour and would certainly never have sought one.

They are surprised, delighted and humbled to be recognised, in many cases for what they saw as just doing their job.

If the honours system is to have a future and have real value, then it is this that must be the bar for recognition.

Excellence, dedication, bravery and selflessness over self-interest and social climbing.

A peerage for “helping me get where I got to” does not cut it as a standard for national recognition.

A knighthood for donating wads of cash to the Tory party, or Labour when they are in power, surely diminishes the value of one given for genuine excellence and achievement.

If Boris Johnson wants to thank his dad for producing him and making him into the man he is today, then maybe a card and pair of slippers or a shout-out on a local radio station would suffice.