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THE UNITED KINGDOM has a new prime minister, the first Labour government in 14 years, and Keir Starmer has some decisions to make about Ireland.
Prime Minister Starmer will have a lot of competition for his attention in the early days in Downing Street, one of which will be the normalisation of relations with Ireland.
Comments made by the new Prime Minister have indicated he is planning to ease diplomatic tensions between the UK and Ireland, with implications for the Northern Ireland border and investigations into crimes committed during the Troubles.
He has criticised the approaches of recent Conservative governments when it comes to dealing with Ireland, saying tensions between Dublin and London should never have become as strained as they were over Brexit.
Starmer made campaign promises in some policy areas that would directly affect Anglo-Irish relations.
He has promised to revisit the Conservative government’s Troubles Legacy Act, which shut down historical investigations into crimes committed in Northern Ireland between 1966 and 1998. The Irish government has brought a legal challenge against the legislation.
“I’m against it for a number of reasons,” he told LBC on 18 June. “The first is it doesn’t have the support of any of the political parties in Northern Ireland. This is the wrong way of doing business.”
He also noted that the act doesn’t have the support of victims groups either.
“There are very powerful arguments and counter arguments. I do want to find a way through this because I think in the end we have to find a way.
“But doing this in a way which doesn’t have the approval of victims of terrorism in Northern Ireland… is not a sensible way to proceed.”
Starmer himself has first-hand experience of dealing with politics in the North, having lived there for five years when he served as a human rights advisor to the Northern Ireland Policing Board.
“I was in love with this island and that love has stayed with me,” he said in a speech at Queen’s University Belfast in January last year. “It’s also taught me so much about politics, about change, about the power of hope.”
Starmer and his wife spent their first holiday after they got married in the North and he’s been known to wear a Donegal GAA jersey while playing five-a-side football.
During that speech, Starmer said: “The Good Friday Agreement is the greatest achievement of the Labour Party in my lifetime, without question.”
That kind of talk will provide some comfort to the government in Dublin after the disregard recent Tory prime ministers showed the treaty during Brexit negotiations.
Boris Johnson’s premiership, and his approach to Northern Ireland in particular, left relations between Ireland and the UK at their frostiest in decades. Liz Truss did not help matters but Rishi Sunak made some progress in agreeing on the Windsor Framework, which put to bed some of the thorniest issues around post-Brexit trade.
“One should acknowledge that Sunak is a great improvement on his two predecessors,” Bobby McDonagh, a former Irish ambassador to the UK, told The Journal ahead of the election.
“I think he’s done quite a bit to make some progress towards restoring relations by, for example, agreeing the Windsor framework and behaving in a broadly normal way, unlike Johnson and Truss.”
On the possibility of a Starmer-led government taking over 10 Downing Street, McDonagh says it would be a good thing for Anglo-Irish relations.
“I think it will be good for British-Irish relations in a number of ways.
“First of all, in terms of the North, the whole peace process was built on what is now called co-guarantorship, where the Dublin and London governments were co-guarantors of everything that happened.
“And that was because it was recognised that there were two communities in Northern Ireland with different aspirations.”
This idea held in relations between Britain and Ireland up until the UK government led by David Cameron.
“But since Brexit, and despite some efforts by Therese May, the idea of the two governments working together as equals in the process has got somewhat lost,” says McDonagh.
He says the UK’s Troubles Legacy Act was “a mistake for many reasons, including that every party in Northern Ireland opposes it”, but also because it was enacted without consultation with the Irish government.
“And it’s not just a matter of, you know, irritation or principle. They will make mistakes, as they have done on the Legacy Bill, if they don’t work with and listen to the Dublin government.
“So I think the first way in which a Starmer government will represent an improvement is that we would expect to return to that sort of equal joint working of the two governments, which worked so well between Dublin and London over several decades.”
Another way McDonagh sees the relationship changing between the two countries is the approach the Labour leader has said he would take to the European Union.
Starmer has said he will seek closer ties with the EU in terms of foreign policy and defence matters. He has also indicated he wants to sign a veterinary agreement, which would ease restrictions on trade, particularly with the North.
“I think Starmer will move slowly but steadily towards a more pragmatic relationship with the European Union, and by definition that means a better relationship with Dublin, because Europe is part of what we are,” McDonagh says.
That said, Starmer has said he does not want to rejoin the EU.
Another factor in considering Starmer’s stance on issues involving Ireland could be the number of people with Irish heritage he has in his team of advisors.
For McDonagh, this may lead to a more informed and friendly approach to Ireland but ultimately it will be the quality of the advice Starmer receives that matters most.
“The Labour Party, I suppose, does have a more empathetic relationship with Ireland than the predominant strain of the Conservative Party these days,” McDonagh says.
But that doesn’t mean Starmer is going to completely overhaul Anglo-Irish relations.
“He’s not going to suddenly become a radical Irish nationalist or anything like that.
“It’s part of his job as British prime minister to keep the peace process on track and to show respect for both communities in Northern Ireland, and that’s what the Irish government tries to do, and it’s what he should try to do.
“So whatever he does, he has to listen to nationalists and their concerns, he also has to take account of Unionist concerns.”
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He looks nothing like Liam Neeson!
Should this not have been state property since it was made ?
Not if it was made by his family.
And was it ?
Jaysus I couldn’t tell you, but I would imagine so if his grand-niece had it.
There was no autopsy or coronial inquiry so it could only have been made by his family.
A true Irish hero
Poignant and creepy at the same time.
WTF is a death mask?
It’s a quaint little British execution ritual that was practical in the days before cameras, but was continued even after the advent of cameras, and which former British colonies such as Malaysia and Singapore still do today. When someone is executed, and as only a handful of officials are allowed to be present, a plaster cast of the executed persons face is made postmortem as proof that they had been executed, and could then be publicly displayed. I don’t know why one would have been made of Collins.
Would love to have seen it go to Collin’s barracks in Cork.
Yes he was a true son of Cork, until ye shot him.
@ Brian , that was sheer brilliance
Dev’s crowd shot him !
Lol, Brian :)
They should leave us at least keep the bullet then.
…but they were still from Cork!
A true irish warrior.alot of lives could of been saved had he not been killed
ffs gimme a break,what about having some respect for people who had a profound impact on our history without being so flippant,can’t you people take sometime out and be more informed,I hate stupid comments
Won’t be queuing up to see that, not even if it was Elvis’s!!
Free world is great! You actually don’t have too!
Dev set him up. COLLINS knew he signed his death warrant when he signed the treaty. He also knew the orange thugs of Carson et Al were armed to the teeth , British officers in Kildale were allowed not to engage loyalists forces and the blood thirsty Churchill made it very clear to Collins that not signing the treaty would result in huge deaths, mainly Catholic. It was a stepping stone and De Velera is no hero of mine. Using collins as a scapegoat. He only escaped execution in 1916 because he was American.
Michael Collins true Irish hero.
God rest him.
My daughters in the background pic
Béal na mBláth not Béal Na mBláth.
A hero……..also a ‘terrorist’ if he existed today. Just read the laws brought in recently. Red thumb this comment away but you know its true. This govt who lay wreaths at his grave, would all be screaming for his arrest. Because traitors wouldnt be around long if he was here.
Cop on. Terrorists . FFS. He got rid of the British terrorists and if that means shooting black and tans and the Cairo gang then that makes him a liberator of Ireland from British rule. War is not meant to be nice.
did you not get what i meant you complete idiot. Im highlighting the hypocracy of our govt who call him a hero while doing being complete traitors to this country. Are you one of those thickos who think loosing our soveignity is fine unless its to the british?
It wasn’t presented by Collins’ nieces, it was acquired for the visitor’s centre by Private Noel McDonnell. Helen Collins and Mary Claire O’Malley were just there to view it on the day.
Anybody care to explain WTF a death mask is?
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