Labour and Tory politicians honoured in New Year list
Sadiq Khan, Andy Street and Nick Gibb have all received knighthoods, while Emily Thornberry has been made a dame.
Senior Labour MP Emily Thornberry is among the politicians named in the annual New Year Honours list.
The former shadow foreign secretary, who has been made a dame, appears on the list alongside Sadiq Khan, who has been made a knight after securing a record third term as mayor of London.
Dame Emily has served as MP for Islington South since 2005 and, after her surprise exclusion from Sir Keir Starmer’s first Cabinet after the election, now chairs the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee.
She told the PA news agency she was “both honoured and surprised” by her appointment as a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.
She said: “I think of my grandmothers, neither of whom were even allowed to work as married women, and think how utterly delighted they’d be to see this.
“My husband was knighted a few years ago and I never felt comfortable sharing his title, calling myself ‘Lady Nugee’, but Dame Emily is a name I’d be proud to go by.”
She added that, on telling the drag queen Ella Vaday that she was going to be a dame, her friend, who was then appearing in a pantomime, replied: “Oh fantastic, and where are you on?”
Conservatives Andy Street, the former West Midlands mayor, and Nick Gibb, the former long-serving schools minister, also received knighthoods.
Sir Andy, who was elected as the West Midlands’ first mayor in 2017, said he had only been “the front man” and the honour was “an accolade for the people in the West Midlands who made a success of the combined authority and the mayoralty”.
He said: “Behind it lies a huge endeavour to set this up from scratch and make it the success that it is.
“It was a huge honour to be able to do that on behalf of citizens across the West Midlands.”
Foreign Secretary David Lammy congratulated Mr Khan, saying: “Sadiq has delivered free school meals for London’s kids, cleaned up the city’s polluted air and built record numbers of council homes.
“I’m so proud that Britain is a place where you can go from being the son of a bus driver on a council estate to being the first Muslim in Cabinet, mayor of our great capital city and a knight of the realm.”
Several former MPs also received honours in the annual list.
Former MP Ranil Jayawardena, who served as environment secretary under Liz Truss’s brief premiership, and former Conservative deputy chief whip Marcus Jones have both been made knights.
Former Labour MP Kate Hollern, who lost her Blackburn seat to Independent candidate Adnan Hussain in July, has been made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE).
Lord Mike Katz, the national chairman of the Jewish Labour Movement who was recently ennobled by Sir Keir, has been made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE).
