Tom Bower: 'I was disgusted' by Boris Johnson's attempt to knight his father

What were your thoughts when you saw this Tom? I was disgusted. Tell me why in particular. Well because I couldn't understand for what he should be knighted. I mean as my book shared conclusively Stanley Johnson was a terrible husband to Boris's mother. She told me shortly before she died in a very long and very harrowing conversation how Stanley, her husband had regularly beat her over the years of her marriage. I mean breaking the nose as your paper reported today was just one consequence. The more important consequence was that she was driven to a nervous breakdown and went to the Maudsley for nearly four months.

And not only did he beat her, but he beat her up in front of Boris. So he saw it and combined with this appalling treatment he was serially an adulterer. So she felt completely destroyed and undermined and Boris knows this and I just do not understand how he could have rewarded his father with a knighthood for nothing other than making his mother so miserable. I wonder Tom in the way these things operate. How far considerations of that kind, allegations of abusing his wife and so on, way when it comes to abording or approving a knighthood of a public figure because I mean you could argue his sister Boris Johnson's sister Rachel argued. You could say yes she's hardly an independent witness, but argues that he's a public figure and might have had an honour in his own right. What do you say to that? But an honour for doing what? For being Boris's father and capitalising continuously as a publicity-seeking individual who really he's written some absolutely inconsequential novels.

He was an MEP 40 years ago. He's done nothing except failed as a father in one respect and failed as a parliamentary candidate. He's just as a self-publicist. I've never heard of making someone knight for that reason. It is really so grubby of Boris. I mean it really is the most astonishing admission of strange values to reward your father at this day. Even some who are close to Boris Johnson say that he treats honours and these distinctions as in some way transactional or for people who are habitably close to him.

And well certainly Stanley Johnson is close to him. There's no doubt about that. Go back, you don't have to go too far back though. Do you tend to see, especially in resignation honours, that they are handed out to people who are I don't know fans, acolytes, cronies to the Prime Minister standing down? Well that's true and of course the most notorious in our life, especially mine, was Harold Wilson's lavender list where a bunch of crooks and people I knew very well at the time, because I covered Wilson's government very closely for BBC, were just absolutely dreadful people, real either crooks or sleazy beyond measure. But you know even David Cameron had given a gong to Samantha, his wife's hairdresser. I think more but the trouble is that Boris has taken it to a new level. I mean Tony Blair after all was interviewed three times by the police for cash for loans for peerages.

That wasn't a particularly nice episode either in the saga of Downing Street Things and Habitants. But I think Boris is just, I mean if you think of his problems with Partygate and Chris Pinscher, you'd really think he'd be more careful now. Boris is misfortunate, he never learns lessons. He really doesn't, he seems to believe that everyone else is wrong and he has an inalienable right to coccasinute at every convention and every act of morality and quite extraordinary. Yeah, I mean there is a system in place to review suggested honours of this kind isn't there? Would you imagine that might kick in at all on this? Well I would hope so but the evidence of the Hancock WhatsApp is that the civil service seems to be as inept as our politicians. They seem to have a strange idea of morality as well and one just, one holds one's head in absolute horror about what's going on in Westminster and Whitehall at the moment. I don't think that nobody there have any concept of decency anymore, there's no shame.

I mean it seems that's all disappeared into the ether. Yeah, I just wonder what sort of changes are required. If what we're discussing here and what you're describing is a particular problem, I wonder what is the remedy, I suppose one remedy might be that the people get honours who happen to deserve them. But maybe some systemic safeguard, guardrails could be put in place to reassure those of us who just aren't sure about it all. Well I think first of all you've got to select both MPs and civil servants who understand poverty and I think for that you need a very, very radical reorganisation of education. You need to get rid of wokery but I just think in the end it's got to be that from the top down starting with the cabinet secretary you have people who are outstanding intellect and some extraordinary understanding of history and the British constitution and what is expected of them at the moment, all that seems to have been eroded and seems to have evaporated and that is really very, very depressing. Well I'm John Penar and if you found that interesting we are here.

Each day Monday to Thursday 5 o'clock till 7 o'clock on Drive and from 7 to 8, Penar and Friends. We discuss the big stories of the day each day on Times Radio.

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