Senior Tory set to hand back CBE in protest at David Cameron’s ‘Dishonour List’
Major Narindar Saroop says he is very proud of his honour but is disgusted by the gongs dished out to the former PM's cronies
A SENIOR Tory is handing back his CBE because he is so disgusted at David Cameron’s controversial resignation honours list, it has emerged.
The former PM was accused of cronyism after he dished out gongs to a string of political allies after he left Number 10 – including a record 13 new peerages to his close knit circle of aides and backers.
Today Major Narinda Saroop said this “Dishonour List” had brought the entire system into “disrepute”.
The former cavalry officer told Evening Standard: “Everyone I have spoken to who also has a decoration feels much the same way.
“They may not take the same action I am taking but there is a great deal of disenchantment about the way that the former Prime Minister has behaved.”
Major Saroop was appointed a CBE in 1982 on the recommendation of Margaret Thatcher.
He made history back in 1979 as the first Asian Tory parliamentary candidate, in Greenwich, south London.
On August 4, the day David Cameron’s list of awards was published, he wrote to the Cabinet Office to ask how he could return the honour in protest.
In his letter to the honours section at St James’s Palace he said: “There is little wrong with our honours system.
“It is the demeaning contempt for it as practised by [Tony] Blair and Cameron which has led to such disenchantment about an otherwise honourable institution.
“Mr Cameron, often with some pride, indicated that he was the heir to Blair.
“This is now fully vindicated by his recent ‘Dishonour List’, which runs close, possibly even overtaking, the lists of Lloyd George and of Harold Wilson’s Lavender List.”
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Speaking told the Evening Standard: “It is a futile cavalry charge but I felt I had to make a point.
“It’s obviously a wrench to return my CBE. I was extremely proud to be awarded it.
“It was the year of the Falklands and I found myself queuing at Buckingham Palace with Ghurkas, soldiers and others who had given honourable service to this country in the Falklands.
“It was a great honour for me to be in the same queue as those people.
“Cameron’s list, in my view, included a lot of people who were undeserving of what they were given.
“Prime Ministers like Harold Wilson and James Callaghan gave honours to their advisers, but many were very hard-working individuals.
“But in Cameron’s list, some of the names were only there a couple of years.”
Cameron’s list included knighthoods for Cabinet ministers Michael Fallon and Patrick McLoughlin and former ministers Oliver Letwin and Hugo Swire, while former chancellor George Osborne became a Companion of Honour.
Samantha Cameron’s stylist Isabel Spearman received an OBE for political and public service.
There were awards, too, for Mr Osborne’s aides, including OBEs for chief of staff Thea Rogers and her deputy Eleanor Wolfson, and an MBE for his constituency manager Jane Robertson.
And key campaigners in the EU referendum were also rewarded, with a knighthood for Andrew Cook, the treasurer of Conservatives In, and a CBE for Stronger In campaign director Will Straw.
Narindar Saroop, who is now 87, served as a regular officer of the British Indian Army, the 2nd Royal Lancers (Gardner’s Horse) and Queen Victoria’s Own The Poona Horse – retiring at the rank of Major in 1952.
He became the founder and first chairman of the UK Anglo Asian Conservative Society and was a councillor in the London borough of Kensington and Chelsea from 1974 to 1982.