Q

MAKE A DONATION

Donation amount
Q

Sign up to the Bow Group Mailing List

* indicates required



Conservative Revolution

Britain and the world’s oldest conservative think tank

Conservative Revolution

Britain and the world’s oldest conservative think tank

Bow Group Chairman writes: Beckham Hacked Emails Prove Honours System is Bankrupt

Feb 9, 2017 | Articles, Publications

DAVID Beckham is absolutely right. The British honours system is bankrupt.

Arise Raffaele Claudio Carbosiero MBE, for services to the hair of David Cameron

The honour to the ex-PM’s hairdresser along with a litany of his other pro EU chums was perhaps the final straw in the bankruptcy of the British honours system, including the House of Lords. 

Charlotte Vere (failed Tory candidate), Isabel Spearman (stylist to Samantha Cameron), Craig Oliver (Cameron’s spin-doctor), Emma Pidding (Tory aide) Will Straw (failed EU campaigner) along with many political donors were all honoured and ennobled seemingly for failure, treachery and irrelevance. 

There have been cries this week that David Beckham’s career is ruined, because in a private email he said just that. 

Well, people have said my career is ruined many times, so I have no reticence in echoing Becks on this. 

There may be those in Britain more deserving of honours than David Beckham, but they do not include hairdressers, failed pro EU campaigners, political donors or “personal stylists” to has-been politicians. 

Beckham is therefore exactly right to cry foul. Yes, it’s unseemly that the public are being shown how the media and establishment really work. 

The Beckham email leaks have lifted the lid on favours being traded for money and other bribes behind the scenes, and yes it’s a shame that Beckham has been sucked into that. But he shouldn’t have been. 

David Beckham probably does deserve an award for his services to sport and his country, without having to pay someone to lobby for him. 

I genuinely don’t know if I would want to be Knighted or ennobled in a system which I know is corrupt to its core. I’m much more interested in changing that system. 

But there are those, like Mr Beckham, who both want and deserve a high honour. The two are not mutually exclusive, nor shameful. 

The way the story has this far been presented is as if Beckham was trying to siphon public funding into his pocket.

He is merely continuing to compete for trophies. It’s what we want him to do.

As a lifelong fan of the far less gregarious lower-key Real Madrid captain Raul (with whom he initially had some friction) Beckham was never my favourite footballer, but I’ve warmed to him over time.

Not because my knowledge of football has increased, but because my knowledge of public service has. He has done a huge amount for his country in just 41 years, and I believe it’s because he loves his country. 

If he didn’t, he wouldn’t want to enter into the Imperial Order of Knights, which despite its degradation is in essence a historic emblem of traditonalism and Britishness. 

He’s already David Beckham, a Knighthood isn’t going to get him a better table at his favourite restaurant or put food on his table. 

I suspect he wants it because he wants the love for his country to be reciprocated, and as such he would be a credit to the system. 

And I can assure him, Knighthood or not, that love and respect exists among the general public, which is what really counts. 

The honours system needs root and branch reform, to be much more reflective of both public mood and its original intention. 

I would argue that it needs more Royal oversight, not less, it is politicians fuelling their own chumocracies that has brought it to this. 

And it’s our own failing as patriots that it has taken a different kind of right-winger to spot that, and bang the table about it. 

I look forward to seeing Sir David Beckham arise before Her Majesty, I just hope it’s once we’ve reformed the system, to keep out the real riffraff that have done less than nothing for this country.

 

 Read the original article on: http://www.express.co.uk/comment/expresscomment/764324/david-beckham-hacked-emails-scandal-honours-system-bankrupt