The government is right to stand firm on the victim pension guidelines

On Thursday it said it plans to celebrate next years’s Northern Ireland centenary.

And yesterday it pressed ahead with pension guidelines that seem to confirm that it will be hard for the more serious terrorists to be beneficiaries.

Both developments are a surprise because they enrage Sinn Fein, and when something enrages Sinn Fein the Northern Ireland Office normally tries to stop them.

Now Brandon Lewis, the secretary of state, has said that the onus is on republicans to let the scheme proceed.

But as Jim Allister QC says, it is hard to see that happening. And as he also says, the morally neutral 2006 definition of a victim is at the heart of this scandal.

Lord Hain recently wrote on these pages that that definition “specifically does not apply to the Victims Payment Scheme,” which is not a service that might be of use to everyone impacted by the Troubles. The pension is different.

But the appeasement of republicans drives much of policy in Northern Ireland. Since January Sinn Fein seem emboldened, and they are standing firm on the pension.

If, after Boris Johnson’s grievous betrayal of a border in the Irish Sea, which is clearly being developed despite his latest nonsense pledge that it will be over his dead body, the government really is at last standing firm on one or two other issues, that is most welcome.

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