Cameron’s ennoblement got me thinking about the general trend of honours given to former prime ministers. Combing through Wikipedia, I have produced a list of them. To keep it from becoming overly long (and to avoid ambiguities about who counts as a prime minister), I have restricted it to honours conferred after the end of Victoria’s reign.

Although their legal status is much the same, British orders of chivalry can be politically divided into two categories: The Baronetage, Knights Bachelor, the Orders of the Bath, St Michael & St George, the Companions of Honour and the British Empire are appointed on the advice of government ministers, while the Royal Victorian Order, the Order of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem and the Order of Merit are conferred at the monarch’s personal whim. The Orders of the Garter and Thistle fell into the former category in the early eighteenth century but were changed to the latter in 1946. Peerages both life and hereditary are presumed to be in the former category.

Here is a simplified list of who received which kind of honour and when. Honours which a person held before ascending to the premiership are not included:

HONOURS IN THE MONARCH’S GIFT

Garter (post-’46)

• Churchill in 1953 (while still prime minister, in advance of the coronation)
• Attlee in 1956 (resigned as Labour leader the previous year)
• Wilson in 1976 (three weeks after leaving office)
• Callaghan in 1987 (three weeks before stepping down from the Commons)
• Thatcher in 1995
• Major in 2005
• Blair in 2021 (New Year’s Eve)

Merit

• Balfour in 1916
• Lloyd George in 1919 (while still prime minister)
• Churchill in 1946 (while opposition leader)
• Attlee in 1951 (while opposition leader, ten days after premiership’s end)
• Macmillan in 1976
• Thatcher in 1990 (nine days after premiership’s end)

St John

• Thatcher in 1991 (Dame of Justice)

HONOURS ON MINISTERS’ ADVICE

Garter (pre-’46)

• Balfour in 1922 (backbench MP) (adv. Lloyd George)
• Asquith in 1925 (adv. Baldwin)
• Baldwin in 1937 (adv. Chamberlain) (immediately after resignation)

Companion of Honour

• Attlee in 1945 (adv. Churchill) (shortly after resigning as Deputy PM)
• Major in 1998 (adv. Blair)

Hereditary peerage

• Balfour in 1922 (adv. Lloyd George)
• Asquith in 1925 (adv. Baldwin)
• Baldwin in 1937 (adv. Chamberlain)
• Lloyd George in 1945 (adv. Churchill)
• Attlee in 1955 (adv. Churchill)
• Eden in 1961 (adv. Macmillan)
• Macmillan in (adv. Thatcher)

Life peerage

• Douglas-Home in 1974 (adv. Wilson)
• Wilson in 1983 (adv. Thatcher) (dissolution honours)
• Callaghan in 1987 (adv. Thatcher) (dissolution honours)
• Thatcher in 1992 (adv. Major) (dissolution honours)
• Cameron in 2023 (adv. Sunak)

It may also be worth considering honours given to the spouses of prime ministers, whether for achievements in their own right or by right of marriage.

• Margaret Lloyd George: GBE in 1918 (adv. her husband)
• Lucy Baldwin: GBE and DStJ in 1937 (former adv. Chamberlain)
• Clementine Churchill: GBE in 1946 (adv. Attlee), life peer in 1965 (adv. Wilson)
• Dorothy Macmillan: GBE in 1964 (adv. Douglas-Home)
• Denis Thatcher: TD in 1982, baronet in 1990 (adv. Major), CStJ in 1991.
• Norma Major: DBE in 1999 (adv. Blair)
• Cherie Booth/Blair: CBE in 2013 (adv. Cameron)
• Philip May: Knight bachelor in 2020 (adv. Johnson)

Unless I’ve missed any, no current or former prime minister (or their spouse) has, from 1901 onward, been appointed to the Order of the Bath, the Order of St Michael and St George, the Order of the Thistle or the Royal Victorian Order.