Editorial: The government has a duty to push back against the Belfast courts in their Sean Brown order, yet has still not done so

There is understandable reticence in challenging the Northern Ireland court order that Sean Brown’s murder must get a public inquiry.

Such a response might seem like it is saying that the 1997 loyalist murder was a trivial matter, when in fact it of course demands scrutiny.

The reason why the NI court order must be challenged is because to order an inquiry into Mr Brown’s killing perpetuates the grave legacy imbalance in how NI’s past is investigated. It also simply buckles to the Belfast courts, when it has been clear for years that they must be taken to the UK Supreme Court given their central role in the situation in which the security forces are the subject of massively disproportionate inquiries, while there is the odd token probe into the IRA – particularly if that probe might end up blaming the security forces for a perceived failure to investigate or stop the said atrocity.

Sean Brown was the victim of loyalists because he was a Catholic, in the long tradition of such heinous murders. The loyalists chose such easy targets because they were cowards and because they had poor information on republicans. Yet now almost every loyalist murder is attributed to collusion, ie the security forces.

There is also the matter of the lack of proper probes for the hundreds of families murdered by the IRA.

Unionists have failed to get to grips with this scandal, and UK governments have not put pressure on IRA liars.

Labour yesterday left in doubt whether it will appeal Mr Justice Humphreys in his Sean Brown inquiry order (as endorsed unanimously by Ms Justice Keegan, Mr Justice Treacy and Mr Justice Horner).

Hilary Benn let Ireland scold the UK publicly last week over the case, just as Ireland is allowed to sue the UK on legacy with no public pushback. Meanwhile, Dublin hypocritically evades scrutiny of its role in the Troubles, eg refusing to extradite IRA.

Why aren’t Reform and the Tories raising this daily?