​Letter: Labour government should honour spirit of VE Day and make all UK citizens equal

One aspect will of course have been the rejection of invading other countries and the emergence of the rules-based order in the aftermath of World War Two.

These same leaders however have imposed an economic annexation of Northern Ireland into the EU / Ireland without having observed the agreed consent mechanisms that the Good Friday Agreement (now breached by Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal) promised would be observed before any change in Northern Ireland’s constitutional position could occur.

While the Labour government has been more business-like and taken Northern Ireland more seriously than most of the recent Conservative secretaries of state seemed to, who had a very reckless approach to Northern Ireland, they have nevertheless continued to offer excuses for treating Northern Ireland’s citizens as second class.

Governments can always find good reasons for doing the wrong thing.

In the spirit of VE Day we might consider how the American government treated its own American citizens who were of Japanese ancestry during WW2, relocating them to concentration camps out of fear of their loyalty.

They had a rationale for treating a portion of their citizens differently but they were nevertheless wrong.

The British government may have a rationale for implementing the Windsor Framework but it is nevertheless wrong and illegitimate.

Northern Ireland provides more people to our armed forces by proportion of its population than any other UK region despite half of our population not even feeling British and yet we are marking VE Day while treating that same region as inferior in terms of rights to the rest of the UK.

This situation may have been the Conservative government’s fault but it is the Labour government’s problem.

If they really want to honour the spirit of VE Day then let them restore NI to full UK membership and make all their citizens equal.

R G McDowell, Belfast BT5