The scandal over the delay in pensions for victims of the Troubles has been decades in the making

Events drift, republicans and their helpers prepare the ground for their next advance, and then when everyone realises what is happening (ie yet another capitulation to the terrorist narrative) it is too late.

This is what happened with the 2006 definition of a victim, and it is happening now with the pension for victims.

Disgracefully, this pension is more than a decade late. Every month it is delayed, a potential beneficiary gets older and closer to death.

The Troubles peaked in 1972, which means even a toddler back at that time would now be over 50. An adult then would now be at the youngest in their late 60s. Anyone aged 50 in 1972 would now be nearly 100.

That there was ever any possibility that someone who was injured planting a bomb would be formally designated as a victim is a scandal, let alone that they might be eligible for state funds. But that is the diseased ‘everyone-to-blame-for-the-years-of-terror’ mindset that has been allowed to emerge, above all by the Labour 1997-2010 government, but which the Tories have since done little to reverse.

Much too late, in the last parliament, there was an attempt to prevent paramilitaries benefitting, but even so it is not clear they will do so. In fact Brandon Lewis even said yesterday the republican criticism was “factually wrong”.

“Someone who has got a conviction can apply to this scheme,” he said. “There will be an independent panel that will assess their conviction and their ability to claim but they will be able to make that application.”

Does anyone expect such a panel to be tough assessors?

The funding of this is a serious matter but ultimately a red herring.

The central dispute is the outworking of the failure of unionists to think long term and of the UK to set red lines decades ago around things that would never be conceded, such as pensions to people who injure themselves while trying to injure others.

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