Editorial: No UK pushback to Ireland on legacy or defence

​The summit yesterday between Britain and Ireland set out areas in which the UK and the Republic would agree.

More detail will be needed to assess the implications of, for example, a new “Ireland-UK Youth Forum to bring together young people across these islands on an annual basis to discuss issues of importance to them”, or what is meant by “minimising barriers to work or travel”.

These are sensible aims between two neighbouring and often friendly nations. The problem is that a political party in the Republic Sinn Fein is obsessively anti British, and indeed taps into a deep well of Irish anglophobia that has been apparent since Brexit. SF has been sidelined since its poor showing in Ireland’s election last year, but the other main parties have aped its politics.

In no sphere is this more apparent than on legacy. The approach of recent Irish governments on handling the past has been indistinguishable from that of republicans. They all want the same legacy structures. This has been most apparent in Dublin’s outrageous decision to sue the UK over the Legacy Act that the Conservative government introduced in an understandable bid to prevent disproportionate prosecutions of soldiers. Labour is scrapping that legislation, citing all-party opposition to it, and unionists have failed to make clear that they have no shared position with nationalists. Hence a legacy process that will, for various reasons, focus on allegations against UK security forces.

It is a reflection of the weakness of the Labour government, but also – to a lesser extent – the Tory one that Ireland feels able to say yesterday it is not dropping the case, when it has been allowed to escape all scrutiny on its own role in the past

Meanwhile, security co-operation with Ireland is welcome but London has not conveyed unhappiness that the Republic has freeloaded of the UK on defence – while suing Britain too.