What was the most important moment at Prime Minister’s Questions today? It was not the somewhat pedestrian back-and-forth between Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch on support for Ukraine. It was instead a subsequent point raised by David Davis on the subject of Britain’s Special Forces. Davis – a textbook example of a free-thinking backbencher – asked the Prime Minister about a ruling last month by Northern Ireland’s presiding coroner.
The government has given no signal that it intends to pursue a judicial review
The ruling concerned a 1992 SAS ambush at St Patrick’s Church in Clonoe, County Tyrone. It found that the use of lethal force by British soldiers against four members of the IRA was not justified or reasonable. The quartet were shot dead minutes after they had carried out a gun attack on a Coalisland RUC station. But Mr Justice Michael Humphreys ruled that the Specialist Military Unit soldiers who shot them did not have an honest belief in the necessity of using lethal force and that it was unjustified and not reasonable.
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