Editorial: The prime minister should dismiss the idea that he and republicans alike apologise for the handling of Stakeknife

The Northern Ireland secretary said he would not comment further because it was was not a final report, and it raised allegations that remain before the courts.

Wisely, Mr Heaton-Harris in his statement kept his focus on the IRA terrorists who not only were responsible for far more killings than anyone else, but who have had the nerve latterly – via the party with which it has been inextricably linked, Sinn Fein – to moralise about the past.

If you engage in or apologise for past mass murder then of course you will depict the past to justify that. And if the apparatus of the UK state is turned against the security forces, causing a deluge of anti state findings in the vast inquiries into Bloody Sunday, Ballymurphy, in inquests into state killings, in ombudsman probes and in civil actions against the security forces, then the IRA – barely touched by significant examination – will be emboldened by that.

As the government is taking time to consider the 208 pages of the interim report, so this newspaper will report on it over in coming weeks. We will examine the extraordinary claim that Stakeknife actually led to a net increase in deaths. And we bitterly regret that heroic agents who turned against IRA terror were not saved in time. But for now, we reiterate something this column called for days ago. Far from apologising for the work for ran agent handlers Rishi Sunak should lead the thanks to them.

It would be a capitulation to moral equivalence for the prime minister of a nation that withstood 30 years of IRA terror, and penetrated them with agents, to stand in spirit with Michelle O’Neill making apologies as if state and terrorist were equally culpable. Anyway, Ms O’Neill did not apologise for IRA murder yesterday but reproduced the republican line about regret for all deaths, as if we were all jointly culpable.