Editorial: Unionists should not assume the worst following appointment of Hilary Benn

Tony Benn was among the Labour MPs who signed a shameful motion in the weeks after the 1987 IRA Remembrance Day massacre of civilians in Enniskillen. The early day motion expressed “horror at the continuing loss of life in Northern Ireland, as occurred at Enniskillen,” without specifying that it was a terrorist massacre. It said violence in NI “stems primarily from the long-standing British occupation”.

But Hilary Benn, while of course loyal to his father, has proved a very different politician in his near quarter century in the House of Commons. Last year he made a highly significant political intervention on the Northern Ireland Protocol, saying that the “idea there should be export health certificates on a cake, sandwich, or a cut of meat crossing the Irish Sea to be sold in Derry, Belfast or Strabane really isn’t necessary”.

He said proposals by the EU while they would be “less than the full application of the protocol, they would actually provide more checks than are happening at the moment”.

These were hardly the words of a rigorous implementer of the protocol. Mr Benn indeed would be a more palatable secretary of state than, for example, the Tory chair of the NI Affairs Select Committee Simon Hoare MP. Even so, unionists should not be complacently waiting for a Labour government. There are influential enemies of the Union as well as friends in that party. There has also been uncertainty about whether Keir Starmer is sticking by his past pledge to campaign for the UK in any border poll.