A new report from Policy Exchange warns that the government is a taking “damaging new approach” to Northern Ireland legacy cases, with a potential return to prosecutions for British veterans and the abandonment of “any form of conditional amnesty“. Potentially setting back the peace process by decades…
Admiral Rt Hon Lord West of Spithead GCB DSC PC, Labour Peer in the House of Lords and a former Head of the Royal Navy said:
“The latest proposal in relation to Northern Ireland legacy cases looks set to strip away hard-won procedural protections from those who served during the Troubles. I agree with Policy Exchange that the Government must think again if we are not to perpetuate a damaging cycle, which is not fair to veterans and is not likely to promote reconciliation in the province.“
The paper adds that repealing the Legacy Act 2023 is “driven primarily by a desire to placate the Irish government and to bring a close to the inter-state case brought by the Republic of Ireland against the UK before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.” All roads lead back to Strasbourg…
Read the full report below:
Providing for the Future of Northern Ireland’s Past
Starmer spoke to Nick Robinson for the Today Programme on Polanski’s criticism of the Golders Green police officers:
“I want everybody just to imagine what it might be like. You’re trying to arrest someone who has already attacked two people and has no regard for life. We know that tasers were fired. I know from my own experience with the police, that there are only two shots in a taser, and once you’ve shot them, there’s nothing left. There’s a guy on the ground, he’s got a rucksack on. And I don’t know what was going through the mind of those officers, but if I was there, I’d be thinking, he’s going to detonate something. He’s going to blow me up and everybody around here. In those circumstances, I think you can quite see why what could have gone through their mind is, we need to do whatever we can to disable this guy…
Now, when I then see Zack Polanski come out and retweet or support a criticism of that, I think it’s disgraceful… He’s not fit to lead any political party.”