LONDON — Former Conservative Cabinet Minister Michael Gove was handed a peerage in former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s resignation honors Friday, allowing him to sit for life in the unelected House of Lords.
Gove, who now edits the influential center-right Spectator magazine, sat in Cabinet for almost the entirety of the Conservatives’ 14 years in office between 2010 and 2024. He served variously as education, justice, environment and housing secretary under four prime ministers.
Gove twice ran for Tory leader in 2016 and 2019, coming third each time, and stood down from the House of Commons at last year’s election. He was a prominent Cabinet proponent of Brexit in the 2016 campaign, but later fell out spectacularly with fellow Eurosceptic Boris Johnson.
Former Conservative Chief Whip Simon Hart, who wrote revelatory diaries about managing Tory MPs, also received a peerage alongside former Scotland Secretary Alister Jack, former Transport Secretary Mark Harper, ex-Attorney General Victoria Prentis and former Tory Chief Executive Stephen Massey. Under British rules, a resigning prime minister can choose to make appointments to the upper chamber, subject to vetting from a House of Lords scrutiny body.
Ex-Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, former Home Secretary James Cleverly and former Deputy Foreign Secretary Andrew Mitchell, who all remain in the Commons as backbenchers, received knighthoods. Former Defense Secretary Grant Shapps also got that honor alongside Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride, while ex-Northern Ireland Secretary Theresa Villers was awarded a damehood.
The Labour government is currently passing legislation to remove the remaining 92 hereditary peers who sit in the Lords by birthright. In opposition, it previously pledged to abolish the unelected house entirely.
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