Has Boris Johnson forgotten what he once said about IRA terrorists?

Boris Johnson’s approach to dealing with historical prosecutions in Northern Ireland has achieved that unique political feat in the Province: uniting both sides in revulsion at what is being proposed.

Northern Ireland minister Brandon Lewis is expected to announce a statute of limitations ending prosecutions in cases which pre-date the 1998 Belfast Agreement. Reports suggest that this will apply not only to members of the security forces but also republican and loyalist paramilitaries.

This was always a likely end point in Northern Ireland’s ‘process’, indicative of the British political class’ reflex instinct to wish the Province and its troubles away. Labour kicked this off with their mass release of paramilitaries and the issuing of so-called comfort letters to IRA members telling them they were no longer wanted in connection with hundreds of attacks and murders.

Back in 2001, a Conservative MP noted that following the release of terrorist murderers from prison, it created the impression ‘that they have committed a unique kind of crime that the law can treat differently’.