LATER on Friday as Scotland and the rest of the UK are still preparing for the big Hogmanay celebration, the New Year's Honours List will be published. It's called the Honours List, but the Conservative Party Donors' and SleazeList would be a more appropriate name.

In order to preserve the fiction that this annual ritual really is the British state recognising the sterling public service of assorted worthies, the list will be bedecked with sporting figures, actors, entertainers, and lollypop ladies from the Midlands who give up their Saturdays to work with disabled kids, but these are essentially eye-catching ornamentation, like so many pretty baubles on a Christmas tree which serve to disguise the reality that what is standing in the corner of the room is a decaying corpse.

The core of the Honours List consists of rewards for time served by senior civil servants and peerages for party supporters and donors, and of course peerages for retired and failed politicians who have been rejected by the electorate. A recent study by the Guardian newspaper found that 27 of the 274 Conservative peers have each donated more than £100,000 to the party.

Political parties have always rewarded their donors, those with long memories may remember the peerage scandal under Tony Blair when it was alleged that donors to the Labour Party could buy themselves a peerage.

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In 2006 several individuals who had been nominated for peerages by Blair were rejected by the House of Lords Appointments Commission. It later transpired that all of them had loaned large sums of money to the Labour Party, exploiting a loophole which meant that while donations to a party had to be declared, loans did not, even if there was no real intention of repaying the loan.

There was a lengthy investigation, Labour fundraiser Lord Levy was arrested and questioned, Tony Blair was also questioned by the police as a witness, the police investigation expanded to encompass potential charges of perverting the course of justice, but eventually no charges were brought and the entire matter was quietly dropped. As is typical in Great British scandals, no one with power and influence was ever found to have been guilty of any wrong-doing, nothing changed, and the British state and the British media continued to pretend that political peerages are really an honour and not a dishonour.

It seems that in recent years under the Conservatives the pace at which peerages are doled out to party donors and the pals and cronies of powerful politicians has increased. Boris Johnson gave a peerage to his brother Jo Johnson, to the arch-conservative historian Andrew Roberts, who wrote a sycophantic piece for the Daily Mail in which he hailed Johnson as one of Britain's greatest prime ministers, he also gave peerages to Conservative donors Michael Spencer, who has given some £7 million to the party and former party treasurer Aamer Sarfraz.

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During his time in office Johnson also nominated peerages for other major donors to the Conservatives, including three financiers: Sir Michael Hintze, who has given £4.5m to the Conservatives, and Peter Cruddas, who has donated £3.4m.

Most controversially of all he gave a peerage to his pal Evgeny Lebedev despite warnings about the influence of Russian oligarchs on British public life.

As well as the New Year's Honours list which is due to be published later today, Johnson's resignation Honours list is also expected to be published in the coming weeks, followed shortly after by a resignation Honours list from Liz Truss. Both of these can be expected to be stuffed with pals, cronies, time servers, brown nosers, and party donors. We already know that Johnson will give peerages to Alister “Suck it up Scotland” Jack, and Nadine Dorries, both of whom are being rewarded with seats in the Lords for services to sycophancy.

This is a system which is irredeemably corrupt. It's a disgrace, not an honour and in a properly functioning democracy it would be abolished and replaced by a system in which an impartial panel of experts awarded honours for genuine merit and real public service.

It's traditional at this time of year to offer predictions for the year ahead. Here's one, nothing about the offence to democracy and decency that are the House of Lords or the British Honours system will not change, not in the year to come or any time after that.

This piece is an extract from today’s REAL Scottish Politics newsletter, which is emailed out at 7pm every weekday with a round-up of the day's top stories and exclusive analysis from the Wee Ginger Dug.

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