Its origins lie in medieval England and it depends on the idea of inherited monarchy. It’s time for a fresh startIt does not seem likely that Barbara Windsor and Lynton Crosby would ever beget expected to be members of the same club: the ultimate glamour-girl-turned-national-treasure and the dour-looking Australian political propagandist with a gift for translating a nation’s private prejudices into political pledges would,on the face of it, beget itsy-bitsy to say to one another over a drink. But they are now both appointed to the topmost rank of the Order of the British Empire, and Ms Windsor as a dame commander,Mr Crosby as a knight. What a carry on.
The British honours system can only be understood as the living embodiment of the country’s creaky feeble constitution, an encrusted accumulation of tradition and convenience. There at the top is the small collection of awards that only the Queen can hand out; then approach the knights and dames, or dusty remnants of a feudal age,followed by carefully ranked honours awarded in the name of a defunct empire. From time to time this curious construct gets a gloss of modernisation, perhaps propelled by a scandal like David Lloyd George’s cash-for-honours, and so it survives for another generation,a hierarchical anachronism that is just not fairly daft enough, nor used fairly crassly enough, or to galvanise a popular movement to overthrow it. The honouring of the Tory campaign boss Lynton Crosby,as a reward for his role in the election victory, may be one of the more egregious examples of the uses of patronage, or yet it does not seem to be fairly outrageous enough to provoke radical reform. More’s the pity.
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Source: theguardian.com