Boris Johnson wants to knight his dad? That's Britain.

Emperor Gaius Caligula showed his contempt for the legislature, it’s rumored, by making his horse, Incitatus, a Roman consul.

In his resignation honors list, Boris Johnson, a keen student of the classics, has nominated his father Stanley for a knighthood for his work on environmentalism. We suppose Johnson thinks more highly of his father’s talents than Caligula did of his trusty steed’s, but the news has been greeted with a similar level of dismay. An opinion poll suggests that only 4% of voters approve of the new "Gong for Dad” campaign.

Johnson, as a legion of titled and ennobled worthies have complained, has devalued the currency of their honors. He had already placed his serious-minded brother Jo, a former Conservative MP, in the House of Lords — a good nomination had it been made by anyone but his brother. The large and very public Johnson clan has many high-profile members dear to the former prime minister’s heart, so it may be a mercy that Tory MPs ousted him last year before he could wrap more of them in the ermine fur granted to peers of the realm.