Editorial: Reform UK's plan to protect veterans of the Northern Ireland Troubles strikes the right tone, even if the details are unclear and will need to be made clear

​Nigel Farage has scored a goal that unionists and Tories could have done.

​He has – or so it seems – made clear that a Reform UK will do something radical about legacy. That was the open goal – to make clear that this will be a priority for those parties in British politics that meaningfully support the security forces, as this newspaper has urged them to do for years.

But there is little detail around Mr Farage’s promise that his party would offer immunity to Troubles veterans and pardons to those already convicted. The last government, for example, offered conditional amnesties for all Troubles killings, and it is likely that the Reform pledge would also be widely applied. Pardons, however, is a new idea.

What is welcome about this statement is its tone.

The process of investigating the past has turned against the UK security forces. The IRA has enjoyed a de facto amnesty on both sides of the Irish Sea, particularly in a Republic of Ireland that then has had the nerve to sue the UK over its now shelved conditional amnesty plan. We all know that terrorist godfathers such as Martin McGuinness would never have been tried, yet lowly soldiers have been.

Meanwhile, Labour is simply not engaging with the point that the opening of civil actions will resume a flood of anti state cases. And Hilary Benn will not criticise publicly and clearly Ireland’s legal case against the UK.

The problem with any amnesty plan or any attempt to shut down the past is not just that it makes prosecutions of terrorists impossible (they were already highly unlikely). It is that nationalist and human rights activists, as well as Dublin, have been allowed to chase UK forces through multiple legal forums without retaliation.

This political and legal fight must be taken to them – protections from prosecution are not enough.