Really. There was one:

There’s a surprise. Lena Pietsch, Nick Clegg’s former Special Adviser when he was Deputy PM, gets an OBE.

This is what the Standard had to say about her two years ago when they named her one of the most influential people in London.

Nick Clegg’s director of public relations
The happiest Lib-Dem in Britain on July 13, German-born Pietsch was celebrating her team winning the World Cup. On maternity leave during the summer, having given birth to her second child, she continued to advise Mr Clegg from home, including on using Twitter to appeal to women voters. An ex-journalist, she was key in persuading the DPM to do his Call Clegg show on LBC Radio.

Cameron has done what Nick Clegg failed to do last year. When he announced his dissolution honours, female Special Advisers were conspicuous by their absence, as Jo Swinson wrote for us.

What is depressing and wearily familiar, however, is the missing women.

But surely our Lords list is balanced?  5 out of the 11 nominations (45%) for the peerage go to women, which is progress I suppose – of the 40 people nominated to the Lords under Nick Clegg’s leadership, just 17 (43%) were women.

And 45% women wouldn’t be so bad if the existing Lords group was well-balanced, but of our 101 Peers, just 35% are women – so we’re still far from equality.

If in 2015 when we have a 65% male Lords party and a 100% male Commons party, we can’t even appoint 50% women to the Lords, what message does that send about how seriously we take equality?

Personally, the last thing I’d want to be doing right now is joining the House of Lords, but I’m delighted that Lynne, Dorothy, Sharon, Shas and Lorely will be, and we have loads of talented women in the party who would make a brilliant contribution there.  Any argument suggesting we just don’t have the women to nominate is complete nonsense.

The picture is slightly better on race, but still a missed opportunity.  1 out of 11 (11%) on this latest list is not white, which is an improvement on the 8% figure for our Lords group currently, but behind the 13% in the general population.  It is worth noting recent progress on ethnic diversity in our Lords group – under Nick’s leadership 15% of his 40 nominations went to people from BME communities.

Turning to the rest of the honours, where women are just 4 out of 15 (27%) on the Lib Dem list, I’m at a loss to understand why, for example, the utterly brilliant Polly Mackenzie, Lena Pietsch, Jo Foster and Hollie Voyce go unrecognised.   It’s as if the contribution of the women is invisible.

Every Prime Minister uses their resignation honours to give honours to those who have taken their journey with them. I can see that.  The sooner the House of Lords is reformed the better, though. This just reminds us that the Prime Minister has the power to appoint people  to Parliament for life. And Tories, unlike, Lib Dems, are unlikely to vote for themselves to be abolished.

Tim Farron was none too impressed with the Dave’s List:

David Cameron’s resignation honours list is so full of cronies it would embarrass a medieval court. He is not the first Prime Minister to leave office having rewarded quite so many friends, but he should be the last. For the reputation of future leaders, such appointments should be handed over to an independent panel.

There does need to be a public debate about this. On the peerages,there is an argument that people who have experience of the workings of Government would be useful in Parliament. If they are that good, though, why don’t they just go ahead and stand for election? That’s what Ed Balls did, and  some bloke who was a SpAd to Norman Lamont when he was Chancellor. Cameron, I think his name was.

What do you think? Frankly it pains me that Cameron was in a position to nominate anyone for anything. He did, after all, decide to hold an unnecessary referendum which would be horrifically damaging to the country, to heal the divisions in his own party. He gambled with our futures and lost. That is not something to be proud of.

UPDATE: I’m told the reason that Lena wasn’t honoured in last year’s last year’s list was that she wasn’t a British citizen at the time. There was an agreement that once she was, she would receive her OBE>

* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings. You can find her on Bluesky at caronmlindsay.bsky.social