The House of Lords Appointments Commission (HOLAC) has confirmed it rejected eight of the former prime minister’s nominations.
Mr Sunak said Mr Johnson asked him to override their recommendations, or “make promises to people”.
But he said he refused, adding it was “something I wasn’t prepared to do”.
The intervention marks a new point in an escalating war of words over Mr Johnson’s controversial resignation honours list.
Downing Street has insisted that Mr Sunak passed on Mr Johnson’s list of nominations unaltered. It says it also accepted HOLAC’s full approved list and passed it to the King.
But on Monday, a source describing themselves as an ally of Mr Johnson accused the prime minister of “secretly” blocking peerages for “Nadine and others”.
Now politically powerless, BJ still thinks he can do as he likes …
At 29, Charlotte Owen, Boris Johnson’s ex-aide, is set to become the youngest ever life peer following her inclusion on the former prime minister’s honours list.
Ms Owen will now become Baroness Owen, but what kind of political career has earned her the honour?
Charlotte Tranter Owen, born in 1993, graduated from the University of York in 2015. She gained a 2:1 in Politics and International Relations.
According to her LinkedIn page, she worked as an intern for strategic communications consultancy Portland, before working as a constituency intern for Tory MP William Wragg for one month. For six months, Ms Owen worked as a parliamentary intern to Boris Johnson, before becoming a parliamentary assistant to Alok Sharma for seven months. For a year and nine months after this, she was a senior parliamentary assistant to Jake Berry and Mr Johnson, before exclusively working for Mr Johnson for a year and two months. From February 2021 to October 2022, Ms Owen was a special adviser to both Mr Johnson and Liz Truss during her short tenure as PM. In this role, when Mr Johnson was in office, she worked half of the time for him and the other half for the chief whip and parliamentary secretary to the treasury, Chris Heaton-Harris.
Her time working in parliament, after being granted a peerage, therefore totals around five years and eight months.
Five years surely comes close to a life time of dedicated service and certainly will give this Ms Owen the sort of breadth and depth of experience that is sought in upper chamber. No?
A video has emerged showing some Conservative Party workers drinking and dancing at a Christmas party during the Covid pandemic.
In the video, published by the Mirror website, one person can be heard saying: “As long as we don’t stream that we’re, like, bending the rules.”
The paper says the video sheds new light on a party that police had previously looked into.
The Conservatives said disciplinary action had already been taken.
Police investigated the event last year and no fines were issued.
Shaun Bailey, who is now about to take up a seat in the House of Lords, was running for London mayor in December 2020.
Mr Bailey was given a peerage in Boris Johnson’s resignation honours list.
In the 45-second video on the Mirror website, people can be seen drinking and standing in groups, while a man and a woman can be seen holding hands and dancing.
Government insiders said she performed a role more like an executive assistant than a top adviser. While no one suggested she had performed badly in her No 10 job, a Whitehall source said that her junior position and short length of service meant she was “the most egregious” addition to Johnson’s peerage list. “It is impossible to defend, even as somebody who broadly thinks the current peerage system is right,” they said. “She was just incredibly junior.”
A temporary executive assistant covering for another’s maternity leave gets a peerage …
Ben Mallet, filmed at “the party” holding a glass of red wine and wearing festive braces, was the Tories’ campaign director for the 2021 London mayoral election.
Well, so far, she’s turned her hand to a small selection of undemanding positions so I’m sure that she could fulfil any special requirements of a non-technical nature that her new role may demand.
Conservative activists filmed dancing at a Christmas party during Covid restrictions in 2020 were invited to “Jingle and Mingle” according to an invite seen by the BBC.
The invitation was sent to 30 people on behalf of Shaun Bailey’s campaign for Mayor of London.
At the time London was under Tier-2 restrictions when indoor socialising was banned.
The ongoing disclosures are almost beyond comprehension …
Tories encouraging “mingling” when socialising was banned …
They are just vile, aren’t they? A disgusting chumocracy with their nose in the trough
Having this sort of people leading our country has brought us to the degraded state we’re in today
No morals, no sense of right and wrong, pure self-interest and total contempt for the laws of our country or our people. No shame, no fear of punishment
We are looking at pure evil. From them and those who continue to support and defend them out of more self-interest
That’s why it’s not a trivial issue and it so important to expose it and see justice done
Tolerating this behaviour from those who want to run our country has led to moral decline and decadence based on self-interest, which is destroying the soul of our country and robbing us of hope
Sort this out, chuck them out, draw a line, stand up for the difference between right and wrong and our other problems will be sorted too. Or at the very least those problems can be addressed from a position of decency
The Metropolitan Police is reopening an investigation into breaches of Covid regulations at a Christmas party at Conservative Party HQ but police say they will not investigate alleged gatherings at the prime minister’s country home, Chequers, when Boris Johnson was PM.
A plan was established in 2017 which aimed to manage the size of the House of Lords, which has now reached 824. It was suggested six years ago that the Lords adopt a one-in, two-out system - for every two people left, only one is appointed.
While Theresa May “responded positively” to this, and “progress” was made up to 2019 in reducing the ermined headcount, the committee singles out Mr Johnson for criticism.
“Prime Minister Boris Johnson showed no interest in the issue of the size of the House,” the report said. “While the number of departures from the House continued to be broadly in line with our benchmarks, the number of appointments far exceeded them and they were granted predominantly to members of his own party.”
The report also noted that the House of Lords Appointments Commission rejected more than half of Mr Johnson’s initial nominees, and raised concerns about the party balance in the Lords and the potential for Labour to appoint swathes of peers should they win the next election.
Among BJ’s appointees to the lords were Evgeny Lebedev, son of ex-KGB agent Alexander and his brother Jo.
The House of Lords Appointments Commission rejected more than half of Mr Johnson’s initial nominees including, of course, Nadine Dorries and BJ’s father, Stanley.
BJ, as usual, taking the proverbial out of the system …
A political journalist-turned-spin doctor who has barely settled into his 30s took his seat in the U.K.’s unelected House of Lords on Thursday as part of Boris Johnson’s controversial farewell honors.
Ross Kempsell, 31, who serves as the former prime minister’s spokesperson, is now Baron Kempsell of Letchworth.
He took his place in the Lords Thursday, where he’ll be guaranteed a seat for life as a Conservative peer to scrutinize government legislation, and will be entitled to claim a £332 per day attendance allowance.
Other Johnson allies joining the Lords this week include the U.K.’s youngest-ever life peer, Charlotte Owens. The 30-year-old former special adviser becomes Baroness Owen of Alderley Edge. Kulveer Ranger, a 48-year-old management consultant and former Tory candidate who worked with Johnson when he was mayor of London, becomes Baron Ranger of Northwood.
