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Rule 1: a total ban on honours for serving Members of Parliament. The only honour to which an MP should aspire is being elected to Parliament by their constituents - and there should be no currency by which the front-benches can purchase their loyalty.
Rule 2: a statutory and muscular "conflict of interest" test. No honours for big party donors, people who have conducted inquiries into the parties bestowing them, or figures in quasi-judicial roles. Like Caesar's wife, honours given on our behalf must be beyond suspicion.
Rule 3: service to a political party, however admirable, is not the same as service to the country. If parties wish to honour chairmen, activists or donors, they should do so in their own way, from their own resources. (We might call this "Cameron's Law").
Rule 4: reorient the whole system around "distinguished service" - to local communities, education, the arts, science, public health, peace, diplomacy, the environment, the disadvantaged - and, yes, to Parliament and government (but in this case, only *after* retirement).
Rule 5: except in cases of conspicuous bravery and the like, the emphasis should be on "lifetime service". No more PR stunts, doling out gongs to 5-minute wonders which we have to claw back again when they crash the economy, stop paying taxes or commit some heinous crime.
Rule 6: abolish all references to the empire from the honours system. We do not "honour" people by associating them with an organised system of conquest & exploitation. We *dishonour* the victims of empire by reducing it to a quaint eccentricity or a meaningless form of words.
Rule 7: senior honours should be dependent on the obligatory submission of accurate tax details - with honours immediately revoked in the case of false information. As a community, we should honour only those who carry out their full obligations to the public realm.
Last, but not least, Rule 8: a new system of national "dishonours" - possibly carryihng jail sentences - for people who write Baby Shark songs, post pictures of their meals online, or write long and portentous twitter threads. I look forward very much to my letter from HM. [ENDS]
