According to reports in the London Gazette, five others were stripped of their honours
A Tory donor who donated over a million pounds to the party as well as a tech entrepreneur are among those who have been stripped of their UK honours.
Conservative donor Lord Rami Ranger was stripped of his CBE on Friday following allegations he made derogatory comments about Pakistanis and harassed a journalist.
Ranger becomes one of a small group of people to have lost their honours, including Paula Vennells, the former Post Office boss, who lost her CBE this year after the Post Office Horizon scandal. According to reports in the London Gazette, five others were stripped of their honours including tech entrepreneur Lawrence Jones who also had his MBE nullified after being sentenced to 15 years in prison for raping two women and sexually assaulting a former employee.
Ranger, 76, owns a consumer goods company called Sun Mark International and was awarded a peerage in 2019 by Theresa May. Lords authorities opened an investigation into him in 2022 after independent journalist Poonam Joshi accused him of intimidation and bullying.
The businessman had taken to Twitter making a series of posts calling Joshi “such an evil woman”, a “total disgrace” and “the epitome of filth and garbage”, and threatened to take her to court, warning: “I will teach you a lesson.”
Ranger also caused controversy last year when he wrote to the BBC because he was unhappy about a documentary which was critical of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In his letter, Ranger demanded to know “if your Pakistani-origin staff were behind this nonsense”.
Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward
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