Call me slow, but for a long time I couldn't see the UK honors list as being anything more than an anachronism and a bit of an old-boy's club, a way for the elite to pat each other on the back with an occasional sop to the working class (e.g. John Lennon).
I've changed my mind.
They offer powerful and influential individuals an incentive to act in the nations interest rather than purely in their own.
Absent this, the constraints on self interested behavior are only ones conscience (which seems often to be malleable and idiosyncratic), and, to a lesser degree, social approval (which sufficiently large sums of money allow one to ignore).
I think that makes them fairly useful.
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