Inside Team Truss’s tussle for titles

In the final hours of the Liz Truss regime, a key question was obsessing advisers: who would get a seat in the House of Lords? Her inner circle was divided as to whether, after just 49 days in office, such privileges were even appropriate. As a few aides tried to convince Truss that honours would be a mistake, her chief of staff, Mark Fullbrook, was adamant a select few would become the lords and ladies of tomorrow.

As a former prime minister, Truss has the right to put forward a list of ‘resignation honours’. The jury is still out as to whether she will choose to do so. There have been five PMs in six years, each entitled to their own set of resignation honours and with their own staff, courtiers, ministers and donors to placate. The posts of Downing Street chief of staff and director of communications have been held by 12 people in two years. More than 60 per cent of Conservative MPs have now served as a minister or a whip. Peerages are a useful way of buying favours, appeasing factions and smoothing the regular transitions of power in Westminster. But in an age of political transience, the permanence of these appointments is especially jarring.

In his three-year tenure, Boris Johnson created 87 peers, twice as many as his predecessor Theresa May. He has refused to follow convention even in his departing act. Ross Kempsell, 30, and Charlotte Owen, 29, both tipped for appointment by Johnson, would be the youngest life peers in history. Kempsell is a journalist turned spin doctor turned journalist turned spin doctor. His best-known scoop was revealing that Johnson enjoyed painting hand-crafted model buses during the 2019 leadership race; the pair subsequently became tennis partners.