I mean, “an historic” is perfectly fine. You’re embarrassing yourself here. For a long time, in many accents, the first “h” was not pronounced in words like historic, meaning it was preferred to use “an”. As the “h” began being said, most people shifted to “a historic”, but “an historic” remains perfectly correct and fine.

Ha. Tell me you don’t read much without telling me you don’t read much.

Language is a bit more complicated than primary school telling you “an” goes before vowels and “a” goes before consonants. It’s about the sounds made not the letters, and H goes both ways regularly.

An honest man vs a hateful one.

And you can have vowels with “a” too!: a uniform, a useful idiot, etc.

Merriam-Webster specifically calls out “historic” as going both ways depending on the speaker.

Your “gotcha” got you.

An historic honour is the correct phrasing.

I regret that the Prime Minister’s correct use of the English language has hurt your feelings. I hope you feel better and that you have a good day.

You’re tripping yourself up on the difference between British English and American English. Canadian English is tolerant of both forms.

Oxford, where he wrote his thesis, would require ‘an’ before ‘historic’. When Governor of Bank of England, he would have had to have been careful to use British English.

If you’re a Canadian using American spelling and grammar checkers to define your language, you might wish to reconsider that. MS Word does have Canadian and UK English options.

How would you have phrased it?

It looks pretty reasonable to me.