'Long live the rubbish King'
Yes, you are in pain, but don’t cut your f***ing leg off
Last week, the Mayor of London, Sadiq Aman Khan, received his knighthood from The King.
His appointment has garnered both condemnation and admiration. Those who applauded the decision to reward Khan do not give an account of the innumerable — that is to say non-existent — virtues he has cultivated over the course of his life but list the accidents of his birth. He is a Muslim, the descendant of immigrants, and has brown skin in a white country. This means, by dint of being alive, he is a courageous, selfless, and noble person. Those who critique the decision to honour Khan are, therefore, suffering from a racism — or at least an indelible phobia. In the minds of those who move through the world with ‘critical race theory’ tinted glasses, this is only rationale explanation for his rejection. Anyone who might object to Khan’s appointment on account of his less than enviable performance as Mayor of London can only be using his shortcomings as a disguise though which they are able exercise their racist instincts.
Khan has been Mayor of London for eight years and in that time it is difficult to characterise his work as generating anything but paralysis. The city’s roads have ground to a halt, street corners piled high with 50,000 abandoned e-bikes. TFL debt has rocked from 1.5 billion to 15 billion. Phone-snatching has become a second economy with over 115,000 phone thefts in 2023 — a theft rate is 19 times worse than Birmingham’s.
Violent crime has also shot skywards. In April 2018, London’s murder rate overtook New York’s. Over 250,000 violent crimes take place in the capital every year with knife crime increasing 54 per cent since Khan’s tenure. Since neither Ken Livingstone or Boris Johnson received Royal honours for their contributions to the city — which includes the introduction of the Oyster Card system and presiding the London 2012 Olympics — it is a struggle to divine why Khan is being rewarded.
To an extent, the outrage at Sir Sadiq’s appointment is outrage toward the ongoing abuse of the honour system itself. Whilst it would be naive to think that the process of ‘ennoblement’ has ever been pure, the recognition — the very definition — of ‘excellence’ feels increasingly corrupted by modern politics.
What is the purpose of the ‘Honours system’?
The instinct of the Honours system (at least in principle) is to reward those who devote their lives to the protection of Britain, and the advancement of her excellence, both at home and abroad.
It recognises those who are considered to be exemplary examples of an ‘upstanding public person’ — people who embody a great number of virtues in their daily life: selflessness, diligence, charity, fairness, humility. These virtues are Christian in origin but are melded with qualities which garner the unique respect of the native British: courage, bravery, fortitude but also wit, daring, and imagination. The one aspect of the British monarchy which might be described as ‘humble’ is its ability to bring together a world of people under one moral framework. This is why hostility towards the Honours system — and, indeed, the monarchy itself — often comes from anarchists and ‘critical theorists’ who reject the moral framework exemplified, rewarded, and sustained by the British monarchy.