Express & Star comment: ‘Nick Clegg knighthood’ is an insult, Nigel Farage should be the one on the honours list
In recent years the honours system has increasingly recognised the efforts of ordinary members of the public who have made an extraordinary contribution to their local community.
It has done much to rehabilitate a system that had been attracting considerable opprobrium for the way it had rewarded time-serving politicians and those whose contribution to the national life largely consisted of chucking large amounts of cash at one party or another.
Reports that Nick Clegg is to get a knighthood in the upcoming New Year’s Honours is, to put it mildly, a retrograde step. Let us be honest; what has Mr Clegg done for his country other than make the Liberal Democrats unelectable for a generation?
Huge numbers of young voters will never forgive him for saying one thing and doing another over the university fee hikes. It was the price he paid for getting the Lib Dems into Government for the first and – in all likelihood only – time in their history.
He managed to alienate hundreds of thousands of potential voters. And he is also part of a widely discredited metropolitan elite that had little, if any, connection with its electorate and was roundly rejected in the Brexit referendum.
The reason for his knighthood seems to be his five year term as deputy Prime Minister. About the only person in this country who had any reason to thank him for that was David Cameron.
If anyone is to get a knighthood for services to the political life of this country it should be Nigel Farage. It is an utter farce that he has again been snubbed. This is a man who has done more than anyone to change the face of politics in this country.
It is impossible to argue that without him there would have been Brexit. He single-handedly turned an eccentric fringe party into a political force that arm-wrestled Cameron and the Conservatives into giving the people the referendum they deserved.
This is a man who has consistently been in tune with the voting public, addressing issues considered untouchable by the mainstream politicians. He took politics out of the grasp of the Westminster elite and put it back where it should be, in the hands of the ordinary men and women of this country.
That he has been spurned for an honour year after year is nothing less than petty revenge by those who cannot forgive him for being right.
That Nick Clegg should be given the honour Nigel Farage so richly deserves is just an insult.
