The honours system has been hitting the headlines again with Boris Johnson throwing his toys out of the pram because his pals won’t get cushy jobs in the House of Lords.

Poor Boris has been left like a screaming child, banging his fists on the floor of a supermarket aisle because his mummy won’t let him have a Kinder Surprise.

As a former Prime Minister, Johnson gets to nominate people for honours.

This process often ends with colleagues being rewarded for services, but Johnson took it to new levels.

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Johnson’s honours thank-you cards include advisers and a chief of staff who aided one of the most chaotic and dysfunctional governments in UK history. They are off to the House of Lords, now entitled to make law for life, while CBEs are being doled out to people for simply doing their jobs.

This tawdry business, and let’s be honest few do tawdry better than Johnson, drags the honours system down and cheapens the awards given to those who actually deserve recognition.

The charity workers, the community champions, and the people in business and industry who have actually done extraordinary things are when the honours system is at its best.

Prime Ministers handing out titles and peerages to their pals is when it is at its worst.

The names on the Johnson farewell list, and those claiming to be blocked, lay bare the shameless cronyism at work.

Nadine Dorries, a minister in Johnson’s government, and his number one fan, was hoping for some reward for services to sycophancy. She is left disappointed but not as much as when Johnson left Downing Street.

Dorries is Johnson’s cheerleader-in-chief, so loyal she chucked her job as an MP when he asked her to, to show how hopelessly devoted to Johnson she is, when she didn’t get a peerage.

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Jacob Rees-Mogg is being knighted. Arise Sir Jacob for services to Victorian-era caricatures.

He can add the Sir to the Lord Snooty title he already has.

I doubt even Charles Dickens could have come up with such a ridiculous character as Jacob Rees-Mogg.

Priti Patel is on the list. The former home secretary who now looks almost liberal compared to Suella Braverman.

Hold on, I said ‘almost liberal’ and ‘almost’ is doing some serious heavy lifting in that sentence.

Patel will now be a Dame, which is apt as this whole episode is turning the country’s honours system into a pantomime.

Michael Fabricant, a Boris Johnson ultra, described the ex-PM as a "visionary" and defended him over party gate to the extent that people thought he was a parody. 

Johnson's former principal private secretary, Martin Reynolds was awarded the Order of the Bath, whatever that is.

Maybe he was chilling all those bottles of wine in a bath in Downing Street during the lockdown parties he was inviting staff to, while the rest of us were banned from seeing anyone outside our own households.

It was Reynolds who sent out the invitations to the bash, so rather than an MBE or OBE, he should have given the BYOB.

There is even an honour for a House of Commons hairdresser who cut Johnson’s hair.

Now we really are having a laugh. Order of the bowl cut.

Johnson is obviously furious with Rishi Sunak, who the Tories put in Number Ten to try and salvage some credibility after the chaos of Johnson and Liz Truss.

Clearly, he is forcing by-elections in a bid to weaken the Conservatives, purely because he is no longer in charge.

Huffy Boris has not just taken his ball away, he is sneaking around late at night trying to set fire to the pitch so no one else can play at all.

Johnson is good at this sort of thing, the scheming, vindictive side of politics.

He was instrumental in creating the chaos around Brexit that forced David Cameron out of office and again Theresa May.

Now he is looking to destabilise another Prime Minister who should be able to count on his, if not support, then silence to allow him to get on with the job.

If we are to continue with the honours system, and most, if not all, countries have some way of bestowing recognition of people who have made a lifetime contribution to others or who have achieved something genuinely remarkable there needs to be changes.

This weekend the King’s birthday honours list will be revealed.

It will include the hard-working people, the deserving people up and down the country, who neither seek nor expect recognition and when they get it are genuinely humbled.

The politicians and cronies, who Boris Johnson wanted to give out titles, medals and peerages, do not fall into this category.

In terms of service, they have mostly been self-serving, furthering their own interests and prejudices or propping up a discredited and distrusted prime minister out of some sort of loyalty in the hope he will help them keep their seat or job.

If Boris Johnson wants to thank them, he could always throw them a party.