Tom Watson: Theresa May is failing her first test as PM by nodding through honours for Cameron’s cronies

Theresa May’s failure to act and block David Cameron’s scandalous resignation honours is proof of this Government’s empty rhetoric when it comes to cleaning up politics.

We now know that David Cameron’s handouts of knighthoods and other honours are set to go to party donors, cabinet colleagues and his own advisers. This is just the latest example from a Government lodged knee-deep in self-serving cronyism that puts donors and friends ahead of the interests of the British people.

Mr Cameron’s list of hand-outs includes Tory party donors, who between them have given at least £2.9 million to the Conservative Party. At least one of these is a member of the exclusive “Leader’s Group” of Tory donors, which is given extensive access to senior Tory ministers and was hosted at the Prime Minister’s official residence, Chequers. It is precisely this sort of practice that highlights the Tory tradition of looking out for the few at the expense of the many.

But Tory cronyism does not stop at party donors. As Prime Minister, David Cameron said he would cap the number of special advisers to “cut the cost of politics”. But during his term, the number of special advisers actually rose by more than a third, while pay increased by over 50 per cent. In 2014/15, the Government spent £9.2 million on advisers, and just last month Cameron even overruled civil service advice so he could give his Downing Street team bigger payoffs when he left office.

Theresa May would like us to believe that her Government is somehow different from what she once famously described as the “nasty party”. But her own chief of staff at Number 10 has already been accused of breaking rules for not declaring a lobbying job she took after leaving the Home Office. It would seem that while the singer may have changed, the Tories’ song remains the same.

This is the first real test of Theresa May. Cameron’s resignation honours must be the final chapter of this long track record of cronyism and favours for Tory MPs, donors and Conservative advisers.

That means the new Prime Minister must veto David Cameron’s resignation honours for donors and cronies and commit to cleaning up the honours system so that it cannot be used for political benefit. She must also move to publish full details of visitors to Chequers, Downing Street and other official residencies to assure people that these national assets are not being used for political gain. Lastly, the Tory Government needs to come clean on the cost of redundancy payments and allowances to former ministers and advisers, and ensure proper rules are followed around the jobs that they can take once leaving government.

It is time to clean up the mess the Tories have made. Failure by the Prime Minister to interfere in this scandal will show that she is unwilling to break with the Tory tradition of standing up for their own interests instead of those of the British people.