Who crashed the economy? – Owl

Fourteen people remain on her resignation honours list, which is being vetted by the House of Lords appointments commission. The list could have been even longer, however, as at least two people turned down a nomination by the former prime minister, The Times has been told.

Matt Dathan www.thetimes.co.uk

One source said they felt it would be “humiliating” to receive an honour from Truss, who served as prime minister for 49 days, the shortest spell in British history. Another said they did not deserve it.

Truss nominated four people for life peerages and 12 for honours such as knighthoods, damehoods, OBEs, CBEs and MBEs. According to previous reports the nominated life peers include Sir Jon Moynihan, a big pro-Brexit donor to the Conservative Party, and Matthew Elliott, who ran the Brexit campaign in 2016.

The others are said to be Ruth Porter, Truss’s deputy chief of staff in No 10, and Mark Littlewood, the outgoing head of the Institute for Economic Affairs, a think tank that backed her mini-budget.

Truss also wishes to recognise a “handful” of “local community heroes” in Norfolk, where her constituency is, according to a source close to her.

It is understood that Kwasi Kwarteng, who served as chancellor under Truss and oversaw the disastrous mini-budget, has not been included on the list. It is not known if he asked not to be included.

Mark Fullbrook, who also worked for Truss in No 10, had pushed for advisers to get honours in the days leading up to her departure last October. However, one aide rejected the honour as they did not feel they had earned it.

A source insisted the list was “very modest” and said it was customary for those departing No 10 to be given the chance to draw up a resignation list.

However, it is likely to renew criticism of the honours system, which was under fire over Boris Johnson’s list of more than 40 awards, which is said to have been whittled down from an original list of almost 100. It included seven peerages, including to an aide aged 30.

Opposition parties have called for Truss’s honours to be blocked. It is understood that she submitted the list to the commission several months ago and the names are still being vetted. Those on the list have not been given any indication of how long it will take. Truss’s office declined to comment.

Moynihan, 75, gave £20,000 to Truss’s leadership campaign last summer. He has attributed her demise to the Bank of England being “asleep at the wheel”, saying the end of her government would “reverberate to the detriment of many people’s view of democracy in this country”.

Elliott, 45, was chief executive of Vote Leave and founded the TaxPayers’ Alliance. Porter worked for Truss at the Ministry of Justice before her stint at No 10. Littlewood, 51, a former Liberal Democrat adviser, has known Truss since they were Oxford University undergraduates.

Since leaving office, Truss has spoken out predominantly about the need to stand up to China. She has been given tens of thousands of pounds by the investment banker behind the right-wing Reclaim Party, as well as a friend of the Duke of York as she seeks to portray herself as a victim of the “anti-growth coalition”.