No, Martin McGuinness is Not a Fit and Proper Person.

Since I’ve always thought Shaun Woodward a nasty little toad it’s reassuring to discover the man will do nothing to earn a reassessment. Is anyone surprised he is entirely relaxed about Martin McGuinness’s campaign for the Irish presidency? Of course not. why would ayone be surprised? As the dreadful Woodward made clear, speaking at a fringe event at the Labour conference, McGuinness’s campaign is in some sense the next step in the “peace process”. Yes, really, Martin McGuinness, mass murderer, is a “fit and proper” person to be Head of State. According to Woodward:

But what I can do as a fellow-member of the [Labour] race and somebody who was secretary of state for Northern Ireland is I think say something about, one, how far it demonstrates the success of the peace process and the political process that we could see the deputy first minister Martin McGuinness now being a candidate in these elections and it simply says to me: ‘Look how far the whole thing has come and look how far we have moved on and look at how we are living in the new era’.

Next:

You ask a very provocative question about fit and proper. Let me say one thing about that. I cannot understand how you make a distinction here between South and North. Simply to comment not on the individual, but any individual, if any individual is up for being first minister or deputy first minister from whatever political party he, or she may be drawn, if they are good enough for the North then, frankly, they are ought to be good enough for the South.

If you are a fit-and-proper person for the North, it seems to me to be a very strange set of rules that have been put on the table to say; “You’re fine to be a fit-and-proper person to be first minister, or deputy first minister, but you couldn’t be a fit-and-proper person in the South”.

This is not a “very strange set of rules” at all (and they aren’t rules anyway, though that’s not the point). Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland are different places. This is not a difficult point to grasp. One might as sensibly say that a footballer good enough for Glasgow Rangers is good enough for Barcelona. Nor is it hard to appreciate that what may, with some fit and proper measure of reluctance, be deemed just about acceptable in one jurisdiction is not in fact appropriate or necessary or decent in the other.

The shabby bargains made during the peace process are one thing but they’re not a qualification for elected office in a different state. Accepting that terrorists (and bigots) had to be accomodated to one degree or another in Northern Ireland is not an argument in favour of voluntarily making them respectable public figures in the Republic.

There is no requirement to forget far less forgive even if the realities of Northern Irish politics require us to thole McGuinness’s presence in power in the north. What must be is not the same as what should be and only a fool fails to see the difference. So of course Shaun Woodward cannot observe or appreciate that difference.