Liz Truss has sent Matthew Elliott to the House of Lords in her resignation honours list. There are some obvious and predictable reactions to this.

First, the sheer effrontery of our least successful PM in exercising her traditional right to an honours list. She lasted less time than that lettuce. She was awful. How dare she? Etc etc.

To which I can only say this: Yes, it’s appalling, but don’t be surprised. Truss is incapable of self-doubt or reflection. She can’t imagine that she did anything wrong so why shouldn’t she have a list, just like any other former PM? Don’t waste pixels on indignation.

Second, sending the sinister dark money Brexit boss to the Lords is surely the latest sign of corruption on high. It can’t be long before the Good Law Project launches yet another funding drive for yet another doomed legal case in outrage against the arrival of Lord Elliot of Tufton Street.

To this fury I have a slightly longer answer that boils down to this: don’t be daft, the whole business of awarding peerages is flawed and always has been. And actually, Elliott should be in the Lords.

To expand on these points, I should remind readers that the Lords has always had its share of members who got there because they were someone’s chum, fixer or founder. Lloyd George had a written price list for honours (£50k for a peerage, thanks) for goodness sake, so the idea that former PMs sending ideological fellow travellers to the upper house is some sign of unprecedented venality is for the birds. This has always been a mucky area of politics and for as long as our legislature includes people appointed for life by politicians, the allocation of peerages will always be an unedifying spectacle.

In that context, singling out any one political peerage is to engage in the narcissism of small differences: they’re all, ultimately, indefensible.

But all that said, Elliot’s peerage is – by the low standards of the Lords – a good and justifiable choice. He’s important and represents a significant part of our recent political history. Indeed, that history might have been different without him.

Here I should note that I am not a Brexiteer. I voted Remain and continue to think that leaving the EU was the wrong choice for Britain. So Elliott’s work in laying the organisational and intellectual foundations for the Leave campaign was not something I could celebrate even while I observed it at close range over the decade before the 2016 referendum. I disagree with Elliott on many things, but I also like and respect him.

And his work mattered. It meant that a large section of public opinion was mobilised and ultimately heeded. I was on the other side of that argument, but I think Vote Leave was a legitimate democratic expression of public preference.

That preference should be represented and reflected in our politics and our political institutions. In fact, I’d rather those institutions did a bit more to accommodate the people and opinions that gave us Brexit and are these days bothered about small boats and ECHR. Because bringing those people and opinions into mainstream institutional politics reduces the chances of another rupture where unrepresented views are the fuel for fires that threaten to burn those institutions.

By the same token, I think it’s a major and ongoing mistake that Nigel Farage isn’t in the Lords. If our democratic institutions can’t accommodate and absorb Farage and his constituency, they can only face further challenges from beyond the pale.

And while there are significant differences between a Nigel Farage and a Matthew Elliott they are both part of a story of a political system that failed to accept and respect a legitimate political argument – with damaging consequences.

In the spirit of Lyndon Johnson, I’d rather Matthew Elliott was inside the mainstream political tent than outside, so I’ll be pleased to see him in the House of Lords.  Not even Liz Truss gets everything wrong.