Might gong for Tony Blair ‘unblock’ honours for successors as prime minister?

Tony Blair’s appointment to the Order of the Garter will spark hypothesis over whether or not related honours are within the offing for his successors as prime minister Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Theresa Might.

Unconfirmed studies final 12 months recommended that the delay in honouring Blair was appearing as a “gong-blocker” for later PMs.

Knight companionship of the Order is awarded personally by the Queen, and sources had been reported to have stated that she was reluctant to ask Mr Blair to affix due to anger at his dealing with of the demise of Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997.

On the time, the brand new prime minister urged the sovereign to return to London from Balmoral and make a public assertion concerning the demise of Diana, who he dubbed the “Individuals’s Princess”.

All however two of the Queen’s 9 PMs earlier than Blair had been made Knights of the Garter, an honour created by Edward III in 1348. Harold Macmillan declined the supply, whereas Sir Alec Douglas-Dwelling was already a knight of the Order of the Thistle earlier than getting into No 10 in 1963.

However just one has needed to wait so long as Mr Blair for the honour – Edward Heath, who was appointed to the Order in 1992, 18 years after leaving workplace in 1974.

Winston Churchill and Harold Wilson took knighthoods instantly after departing Downing Road, whereas Clement Attlee and Margaret Thatcher needed to wait round 5 years and Main and James Callaghan eight. Anthony Eden was already a Companion of the Order earlier than changing into PM in 1955.

The Sunday Instances final 12 months reported that the delay in honouring Blair was stopping related titles for his successors.

Courtiers had been stated to be eager to handle a political imbalance as a result of among the many 102 members of the 4 most coveted honours — the Order of the Garter, the Order of the Thistle, the Order of Advantage and the Order of Companions of Honour — Tory politicians outnumber their Labour counterparts by greater than 5 to 1.

It was reported that  rebalancing the system might additionally profit Labour grandees together with John Prescott, Margaret Beckett and Harriet Harman.

Nevertheless, Heath’s lengthy wait signifies that there is no such thing as a formal bar to prime ministers being appointed to the Order forward of their predecessors, as each of his Labour successors Wilson and Callaghan turned Garter knights earlier than him.

Royal sources final 12 months dismissed options that the Queen was blocking an analogous honour for Blair as “absurd”, saying that studies recommended “a pettiness that merely doesn’t exist”.