Owen Polley: The Bobby Storey IRA funeral was reminder of who is in charge of Northern Ireland

I’m afraid unionists will just have to suck it up.

The peace process is based on appeasing Sinn Fein and their ilk.

Many of these people come from a movement with a criminal background and there is no sanction that they recognise, so what are we going to do about it?

The implicit threat that has kept things moving their way is that if we don’t do what they want, republicans will return to violence.

This form of intimidation has ensured that the government, the political parties in Northern Ireland and, particularly, the mass of people in this country, who just want to get on with their lives, will do anything, give anything, to make that problem stay away.

If you were surprised by the Bobby Storey funeral fiasco, frankly, you must have been living under a rock.

This is just the latest in a succession of Provo funerals where guidelines were flaunted and advice was ignored.

The motion calling for Michelle O’Neill and Conor Murphy to apologise illustrates the extent to which the other parties are toothless.

For months, these characters lectured us about coronavirus and urged a harder, more extreme lockdown.

They cast it as a matter of lives against the economy.

They threw an almighty tantrum when the schools didn’t close as quickly as they wanted, when even the worst-case-scenario modelling of University College London acknowledged that this was one of the last things that should have been done.

Yet, when this odious character — a bank robber, a jailbreaker, a key figure in a murderous terror group — died, we saw what Sinn Fein is all about.

The enormous ceremony in West Belfast was a show of strength by the IRA. A reminder of who is in charge of this place.

They staged an ostentatious extravaganza for their henchman.

It was not a burial, because he was taken elsewhere, to east Belfast, where Northern Ireland’s largest cemetery was occupied by the Provos.

The PSNI, let’s face it, the whole of society, colluded to allow this abomination to take place.

That was one day.

It is relatively unimportant when you start to weigh things up.

It is a minor infraction when you consider how they’re allowed to glorify terrorism and sanitise murder regularly, through parades, funerals, the Sinn Fein friendly festival in West Belfast (funded lavishly through rate-payers money).

The legacy process has been rigged in their favour, to ensure that the IRA will not be held to account for the vast majority of murders during the Troubles, but the finger will instead be pointed at the security forces.

The New Decade, New Approach debacle was concocted to entice them back into the executive.

A border will soon be drawn down the Irish Sea in order to placate their separatist designs.

Despite this litany of disgrace and deception, they are the most popular party among nationalists.

They collapsed Stormont for three years, made ridiculous demands, and although their vote share went down a little in Northern Ireland, they became the biggest party in the Republic.

So what are we going to do?

The DUP prostrated themselves to get the assembly up and running again. They demolished the three strands of the Good Friday Agreement and signed up to a deal co-authored by the Dublin government.

They are going to slap O’Neill on the wrist and carry on as normal.

The Ulster Unionist Party, under Steve Aiken, will not have the backbone to walk away from the executive.

Quite rightly, Ben Lowry said that should be their approach in Saturday’s News Letter (July 4, see link below), but can you actually see it happening?

No.

In a week’s time there will be a few unsanctioned parades and suddenly that will become the focus of media attention.

Move on, nothing to see here.

• Ben Lowry: The appeasing of Sinn Fein will not stop, so the Ulster Unionists should now go into opposition

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