Editorial: The final betrayal of UK state forces on legacy is getting nearer, with the implementation of Keir Starmer's capitulation to the hypocritical Irish government on the past

This newspaper has been chronicling the betrayal of legacy for a decade now.

​It was 2015 that we, alone, began to examine the failings in the Stormont House legacy agreement the previous year, which only the Ulster Unionist Party opposed.

It became clear over time that the 2014 Stormont House deal would at best maintain the anti state imbalance in legacy probes, and perhaps make it worse.

The overall unionist and UK government response to that scandal has been poor. The Conservative administration did however begin to realise that legacy was out of control, something we highlighted with increasing emphasis from 2016, and tried in 2020 to shut the process down. While such an approach was far better than the status quo, or indeed than Stormont House (which, mercifully, was never implemented) it was also cowardly. It meant the Irish government and Irish republicans would both get away with years of chasing the UK on the past while being shielded from their own culpability.

The relatively mute response when Ireland then went on to sue London over its conditional amnesty plan (Dublin cited unionist opposition to that plan, to imply it was suing on behalf of everyone) was the next stage in the legacy scandal.

Now the Labour government has capitulated to a state that is suing it, and is trying to disguise its betrayal of its own country by, for example, stopping Gerry Adams from getting damages from Britain. But that move, which the Tories tried to do far too late and Labour for a while almost reversed, is minor compared to the outrage that Dublin has succeeded in citing the failed Stormont House deal to get back on track a process in which UK state forces, who prevented civil war, are hounded on legacy while the IRA enjoys its de facto amnesty, and Ireland makes useless pledges on legacy while continuing to be exempt from real scrutiny.