Emily Thornberry calls for ban on posthumous knighthoods to be scrapped

The ban on posthumous honours for worthies who are overlooked in their lifetimes should be scrapped, Emily Thornberry said yesterday.

The Labour leadership contender said Martin Peters, who died last week, and fellow 1966 England World Cup winner Bobby Moore, who died in 1993, both deserved knighthoods.

She suggested similar awards should go to Emily Davison, who fell under a horse in a Suffragette protest at the 1913 Epsom Derby, and Second World War codebreaker Alan Turing, who killed himself in 1954 after being convicted of homosexuality.

Ms Thornberry said the former footballer Martin Peters (left with Bobby Moore, centre, and Geoff Hurst, right) and Bobby Moore both deserved knighthoods

In a clear attempt to woo traditional Labour voters, Miss Thornberry also asserted her strong support for the monarchy.

She said for most people who receive an honour at Buckingham Palace it is the ‘proudest moment of their working lives’.

The Shadow Foreign Secretary’s striking comments in support of honours and the Royal Family were a contrast to Jeremy Corbyn’s perceived lack of patriotism.

The Labour leader was ridiculed when it emerged he did not know the Queen’s Christmas Day TV broadcast was shown at 3pm.

Miss Thornberry, a Remain supporter, is being backed by some Labour moderates who fear her hard-Left leadership rival Rebecca Long Bailey will refuse to dump Mr Corbyn’s vote-losing policies.

She said the reasons given by honours chiefs for not awarding a posthumous knighthood to Moore were ‘frankly ludicrous’.

Although she disapproves of honours for political ‘cronies’, Miss Thornberry said there were ‘thousands of community heroes who thoroughly deserve awards’.

She went on: ‘For many it will be the very proudest moment of their working lives – to visit Buckingham Palace, and be presented with their award by a member of the Royal Family, especially if it is from the Queen.’

The politician also suggested Emily Davison (pictured), who fell under a horse in a Suffragette protest at the 1913 Epsom Derby, deserved a similar award

Calling for posthumous gongs, she added: ‘The wives and children of Martin Peters and Bobby Moore should not be denied the recognition they deserve simply because they died before their time.’

She said if she became prime minister, she would introduce a third annual honours day, in addition to the current new year and birthday honours, to award posthumous gongs to ‘those who served our country but died without receiving proper recognition’.

Miss Thornberry regularly had to deputise for Mr Corbyn at events involving the Royal Family, most recently representing Labour on his behalf at the annual festival of remembrance at the Albert Hall.

Labour MPs say she was also conspicuously the only senior politician from the party to bow their head to the monarch when entering the House of Lords for last week’s Queen’s Speech.

Miss Thornberry was accused of sneering at working-class voters in 2014 when she tweeted a photo of a house in Rochester, Kent, draped with the St George flag and a white van parked outside.

The photo featured her apparently mocking caption ‘Image from Rochester’.

Miss Thornberry has also explained why, in spite of supporting the honours system, she did not use her right to be known as Lady Nugee by virtue of being married to Sir Christopher Nugee, a High Court judge.

As a feminist, she ‘would never call herself by a title that she hadn’t earned on her own steam’, she said.