Ben Lowry: The Brexit chaos means UK might capitulate to republicans and Dublin on legacy

The government, by throwing in its lot with Jeremy Corbyn, is determined to push through the Irish border backstop, with its unknowable but major, constitutional implications.

The Labour Party might well be as happy to support the backstop as the Tories.

Meanwhile, the government has implicitly warned that if direct rule comes back, it will be with an Irish dimension — much the same threat Tony Blair deployed to ensure the DUP entered power with Sinn Fein.

Think about what that means: either the DUP agrees the Withdrawal Agreement (WA), with its damage to the Union, or restores power-sharing, which can only happen by bowing to republican blackmail.

Otherwise, Simon Coveney (who agrees with core SF demands, including that we must reward those who use the Irish language in parts of the west of the Province in a triumphalist and sectarian fashion) will have a say in our governance.

The talk of a greater Irish role in running NI has not gone unnoticed by nationalists. Eamonn Mallie tweeted:

#Brexit.. if my insight into the catholic nationalist community in Northern Ireland is accurate and the DUP make a bad call in the current political circumstances there is one guarantee: devolution is dead - period! This opens the door to Direct Rule. @LeoVaradkar @theresa_may

Eamonn has a greater insight into nationalism than I do, but my sense is the same. SF once said there must be no direct rule, but now seem relaxed at the idea.

This is because it would result in another irrevocable tilt towards all island governance (concessions to Irish nationalism are always irrevocable, and become the baseline for the next set of demands).

Amid the chaos is the risk London will press ahead with legacy as demanded by Sinn Fein and Dublin.

SF has gone from insisting on the Stormont House legacy structures it likes – opening state files, legacy inquests, etc — to demanding (for example Declan Kearney last month) that all structures be implemented.

No wonder. Consider the mooted Historical Investigations Unit (HIU), the body that might have brought balance to this scandal, given the overwhelming culpability of terrorists in killings.

Read Doug Beattie’s article in our paper this week, or essays in our legacy scandal series, such as by Neil Faris, on what awaits the RUC in the HIU (see links below to these articles). See what the Police Federation said on that betrayal. Read Norman Baxter and Alan McQuillan on the concessions already given to terrorists.

Hundreds of millions combined have been spent on the Bloody Sunday inquiry, on legally aided civil actions by republicans against the state, and on one Troubles killing out of 3,700, that of Pat Finucane.

Tens of millions more will be spent on the long demanded legacy inquests, scores of which relate to terrorists who were killed. Now, also, much of HIU’s time will be chasing the state.

A large amount will be on hundreds of misconduct claims against the RUC. HIU will also handle referrals on some of the 360 or so killings by state forces, all of which are before the PSNI legacy branch.

Recently a civil servant waved through £50+million for the legacy inquests, the costs of which have been estimated at £1 million a hearing. Earlier, a civil servant chose not to appeal a court ruling that, in effect, ordered them.

This week it was reported that yet another IRA terrorist, shot by the state, is to get an inquest.

When will it stop? When, to quote Trevor Ringland’s letter in this paper this week, will we recognise the unspeakable truth that “the focus on state killings ... ties up limited resources in a way that ensures they’re not available to hold the main perpetrators to account. Another aim is to alienate people from the state and each other”.

This is a deep crisis.

Simon Coveney, who is at the helm of an Irish government that is telling the world about the horrors of a past hard border, without explaining that it was terrorists who made it hard, is now warning — yes warning! — the UK that legacy structures must be balanced.

What he probably means is that the UK must not, after the legacy public consultation results, amend flaws that make state forces more vulnerable to the planned bodies.

The recent Supreme Court ruling on the despicable murder of Pat Finucane was seized on by a wide range of voices to say there must be a full public inquiry into Mr Finucane’s killing, on top of the millions already spent on that case.

If the UK agrees to that, it ought to announce it as follows: “OK, we are now under so much pressure to hold this inquiry that we are going to do so. But it is increasingly clear that fundamental aspects of IRA terror have no prospect of proper scrutiny in the legacy proposals.

“With Dublin now lecturing us on this, referring us to the Council of Europe, despite the Irish state’s facilitating of murderers, even after the 1985 Anglo Irish Agreement, we are unilaterally setting up a number of inquiries: into certain murders, including that of the lawyer Edgar Graham; into the worst bomb atrocities; and into the role of the Irish state in harbouring IRA.”

The UK still has time to access information from a tier of experts alive who know who in the IRA did what, who helped them, and so on.

There is talk of terrorist victims who got no satisfaction under the precursor to HIU, the Historical Enquiries Team (HET), such as Anne Graham (sister of Edgar), who just got a letter, now getting an HIU report. But this will likely result in a further finding that there is no new evidence. It will not balance things.

Nor will the odd extradition from south to north now make up for decades of refusal to do.

Much of the population in Northern Ireland is, I believe, in denial about the things that are happening on legacy, perhaps because it is such an inversion of right and wrong as to be too painful to face. But we cannot duck this.

The UK will, of course, not take the line on legacy suggested above. Re-balancing might have to be done independently — aside from this newspaper, there are still people in media, in politics, in academia, who want to highlight things.

With the government in panic and retreat on Brexit, it might force through nationalist demands — particularly after Karen Bradley mangled the point about UK forces preventing civil war.

The net result will embed the notion that Britain was a gangster state in the Troubles, when almost the opposite is true.

It allowed terrorist leaders decades to come off bloodshed at their own pace, while a somewhat sectarian, somewhat inept and ultimately unfriendly state across the border did little to stop any of it.

• Ben Lowry (@BenLowry2) is News Letter deputy editor

• Trevor Ringland: The focus on state killings is bid to twist our understanding of the Troubles

• Doug Beattie: Every step of planned the legacy unit process can undermine RUC Troubles failures, while ignoring the context of the time

• News Letter legacy scandal essay series

• Police Fed chief: Legacy plans a shambles and disgrace