Sadiq Khan House of Lords Nomination: A Historic Honour in Keir
Starmer’s Final List
Sadiq Khan has been nominated as a life peer to the House of Lords, in one of outgoing PM Keir Starmer’s final acts in office.
LONDON: The Sadiq Khan House of Lords nomination has been confirmed, with the London Mayor set to become
a permanent member of the United Kingdom’s upper house of Parliament, after being named in outgoing Prime
Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s dissolution honours list — one of the last acts of his premiership before handing power
to his successor.
Sadiq Khan House of Lords: A Historic Honour for London’s Mayor
Khan, who is currently halfway through his third term as Mayor of London, is among 26 people named to sit in the House of Lords as life peers. The nomination gives him a permanent seat in Parliament’s upper chamber, with the right to speak, scrutinise government legislation and vote on it for the rest of his life.
A former Labour MP for Tooting before he was first elected mayor in 2016, Khan said through a spokesperson that he was “honoured” to receive the peerage, calling it a significant and historic recognition of his years in public life. A government source praised his record in City Hall, saying he “has cut violent crime to record lows, cleaned up the capital’s air, delivered the Elizabeth Line and got London building council homes again.”
Unlike hereditary peers, a life peerage is not passed down to children — the title and the seat in the Lords apply only to the individual named, for as long as they live.
Who Else Made the List?
The Sadiq Khan House of Lords nomination places him alongside senior figures from politics, the judiciary, the
military, trade unions and civil society. Among the most notable names:
● Sir Chris Wormald — former Cabinet Secretary, the UK’s most senior civil servant
● Sir Brian Leveson — retired senior judge who led the 2011 Leveson Inquiry into press conduct after the
phone-hacking scandal
● General Sir Patrick Sanders — former Chief of the General Staff of the British Army, nominated by the
Conservatives
● Christina McAnea — former General Secretary of UNISON, one of the UK’s largest trade unions
● Parvais Jabbar and Saul Lehrfreund — human rights lawyers who co-founded the Death Penalty Project
● Cathy Ashley — a families’ rights campaigner and former head of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust
● Tim Leunig — chief economist at social innovation foundation Nesta, nominated by the Liberal Democrats
The list blends career politicians with campaigners and institutional figures, a pattern typical of dissolution honours lists, which outgoing prime ministers traditionally use to reward allies and public servants on their way out of office.
How the 26 Seats Break Down by Party
Of the 26 new peers, 16 were nominated by the Labour Party, five by the Liberal Democrats, three by the Conservatives, and two are crossbench peers with no party affiliation. Despite Labour’s strong showing on this list, the Conservative Party continues to hold the largest bloc in the Lords overall, with 246 seats compared to Labour’s 216 before these latest appointments — leaving the opposition with a numerical edge in the upper chamber even after Starmer’s additions.
The End of the Starmer Era
Khan’s elevation to the Lords comes at a pivotal moment in British politics. Starmer’s dissolution honours list was published just days before Andy Burnham was expected to succeed him, first as Labour leader and then as Prime Minister on Monday, July 20. The reshuffle marks a significant leadership change at the top of the Labour government, and Starmer’s final list of appointments is widely seen as a marker of the causes and colleagues he chose to prioritise on his way out.
Reform UK Left Empty-Handed — Farage Cries Foul
Notably absent from the list is any nominee from Reform UK, the right-wing party that has surged in the polls over the past year. Reform currently holds seven MPs in the House of Commons but has no representation at all in the House of Lords, after its sole peer, former Conservative Malcolm Offord, resigned to contest the 2026 Scottish Parliament election.
Reform leader Nigel Farage criticised the snub sharply, saying: “Once again, there is nothing for Reform and we get an even more unrepresentative upper house.”
Farage has separately called for the “democratic disparity” in the Lords to be addressed, arguing it is unfair that smaller parties with fewer MPs than Reform continue to hold seats in the chamber while his party remains shut out entirely.
A Chamber Still Facing Reform Questions
The row over Reform’s exclusion has reignited a long-running debate about the future of the House of Lords itself.
Critics on both the left and right have renewed calls to reform or replace the fully appointed chamber, arguing that a
body stacked through prime ministerial nomination — rather than election — sits awkwardly within a modern
democracy. For now, though, the tradition of outgoing prime ministers rewarding loyalists, campaigners and public
servants with lifetime seats remains firmly intact, and the Sadiq Khan House of Lords nomination will be added to
that long list of political history.