- PODCAST: Acclaimed columnists Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens tackle one big idea each week on our new politics podcast – Alas Vine & Hitchens. Listen here
Acclaimed broadcaster Peter Hitchens has criticised Britain’s ‘profoundly unfair’ honours system on the latest episode of the Alas Vine & Hitchens podcast.
Prompted by co-host and Mail columnist Sarah Vine asking Hitchens whether we would ever accept a Lordship, the best-selling author responded by saying he would not want to rub shoulders with the current ‘sludge’ that sits in the House.
The Conservatives are currently in a fight with the government over its plans to totally scrap hereditary peerages, part of wider Labour plans to reform the House of Lords.
‘There are people in the House of Lords that I look at and think: why on Earth am I not in it?’, Hitchens questioned.
‘These are people who I was in the Hampstead Labour party with in the 1970s – people with knighthoods used to sit on my sofa in Belsize Park. You must be joking.
‘The only reason somebody like me isn’t given a peerage is because I am on the naughty list of every major political party.
‘There are some talented and intelligent people in there, but they are outnumbered by this mass of political sludge.’
Hitchens went on to attack the entire honours system, believing it only awards those that are truly worthy with the titles at the ‘bottom of the system’.
‘The way it operates is profoundly unfair’, the broadcaster argued.
‘A friend of mine who was very hard working ran a foodbank in my hometown and was awarded an MBE.
‘Obviously, awarding people like that is right. But they come in at the bottom of the system, whereas people who frankly are worth very little to anybody are made Barons and Baronesses. It’s completely skewed!’
Vine then pushed her co-host on whether he’d ever accept a knighthood for services to journalism.
Peter Hitchens: ‘There are people in the House of Lords that I look at and think: why on Earth am I not in it?’ Listen here
Hitchens replied that he would never accept an honour from King Charles after the monarch allegedly ‘lost his nerve’ over a meeting with the author some years ago.
He explained: ‘The King, when he was Prince Charles, wanted to see me. I waited and then nothing happened.
‘Some years later, Tristram Hunt, the former Labour MP revealed in an article that Charles had at that time a couple of Blairite advisors who said to him, you’re quite mad, you mustn’t meet this man.
‘Charles was bullied out of it – and that was a failure in my eyes.’
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