Imagine if a leader as blunt as Donald Trump was prime minister and Ireland was suing the UK. Imagine that such a personality was in Downing Street when the Republic was not merely taking a legal case in Strasbourg against Britain over the latter’s handling of the legacy of the Troubles, but was doing so on flagrantly hypocritical grounds (Dublin is suing London over the last government’s now shelved plans for a conditional amnesty, yet one of its former justice ministers says Ireland has been operating and undeclared amnesty for the IRA).
US President Donald Trump with Sir Keir Starmer at Chequers last year. Mr Trump as prime minister would not be so weak towards Ireland as Sir Keir has been, who has not even criticised Ireland suing the UK.
Then imagine that this Trumpian style UK leader was responding to the fact that Ireland is not only suing Britain on legacy, but has been allowed to evade all its on responsibilities on how the past is examined, such as IRA terrorists using the Republic as a safe haven.
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And finally imagine that this tough, fictional prime minister was weighing up the fact that Ireland is paying next to nothing on defence, is reliant on the already strained UK military to defend its waters and airspace and critical infrastructure, and is then using the vast Irish coffers (bolstered by being a highly successful tax haven) to spread money on targeted projects in
Northern Ireland to make the huge subsidies that London pumps into this province look insufficient.
Do you think that this Donald Trump-style PM would be doing nothing?
Do you think that he would be holding gushing summits with Irish leaders while they continue to sue the UK?
Do you think that he would be too timid even to criticise the Irish legal action?
Do you think that he would be merely letting Ireland ignore its legacy failures, instead of taking unilateral action to put a spotlight on that past?
And above all: Do you think that this Trumpian leader of the UK would striking deals with Ireland to defend them militarily when they have made a deliberate choice not to spend their own wealth on those defences, and that he would be merrily making that deal while asking them to pay nothing? And then ask yourself this: would such an imaginary UK leader be doing all of this when UK veterans face endless investigations into the Troubles at vast UK taxpayer expense, while IRA leaders either face none, or somehow seem to shake off the minor investigations they do face. We all know that such a leader would not tolerate any of these things for five seconds. Yet
Keir Starmer has done, and the Tory government before him was hardly much more robust. In fact Sir Keir doesn’t even criticise the Irish legal action against the UK, as my question to him in Lisburn last month confirmed (
click here to see that question).
You do not, however, need to long for a Trumpian prime minister. We just need a reasonably strong one who will at last respond forcefully to Dublin. This week our political editor David Thompson interviewed Sir Nick Parker, a former head of the British army who was also in charge of the military here in NI. David interviewed a former SAS commander her during the Troubles, George 'Geordie' Simm. Those interviews are in today’s newspaper (
Click here: Former top Army general questions UK government's focus on legacy deal with Ireland) or were published earlier this week (where they can still be read online,
click here ‘Troubles bill could affect UK's national security’ says former army head, and also
click here: ‘UK forces more restrained in Northern Ireland than any other civilised nation would have been - ex SAS commander’). I also spoke to both men. It is astonishing that the UK patiently saw off IRA-led terror over 30 years, and ushered in peace to Northern Ireland, yet has latterly been so inept on legacy that military men of this stature are having to speak out with growing anger as to what is happening.
Labour seems set to push its legacy plan through the House of Commons in the coming weeks. There might be slight improvements to the ‘protections’ it supposedly promised to veterans on legacy, that were agreed with the Irish government and thus – surprise – were soon shown to be useless or equally applicable to terrorists.
The daughter and and grand-daughter of the late Airey Neave wrote to the Daily Telegraph recently about this scandal. Mr Neave was murdered when he was Margaret Thatcher’s shadow Northern Ireland secretary, weeks before her 1979 election (of the seven MPs murdered over the last century, five were killed by such republicans).
Marigold Webb, Mr Neave’s daughter, and Kate Holland, his granddaughter said: “The fact that the new bill may try to make the actual prosecution [of veterans] appear like a visit from the district nurse is immaterial.”
What a demolition of the government.
Men such as Sir Nick Parker and George 'Geordie' Simm are now openly saying that the UK government is putting the interests of an Irish government that has behaved in such an unfriendly way over the interests of its own Troubles veterans.
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