Keir Starmer claims that Labour is “the patriotic party now” and poses with army veterans to promote its image as “the party of national security”.

Really? So how come Sir Keir’s incoming Labour government is set to abolish the law that protects our Northern Ireland military veterans from being prosecuted?

What is patriotic about allowing ex-soldiers in their seventies and eighties to be dragged before the courts for what leftie human rights lawyers allege that they did while serving their country on UK streets decades ago?

How dare shameless Starmer pose with army veterans for election campaign PR around the D-Day anniversary, while plotting to help railroad their former comrades into court?

Moreover, how can we expect young men and women to join the armed forces today and fight to defend Britain in a dangerous world, with the threat of being convicted by the European Court of Rights in 50 years’ time hanging over their heads?

The Northern Ireland Legacy act was passed by the UK parliament late last year.

It offers a conditional amnesty to all those accused of offences committed during the 30 years of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, whether they were British soldiers or terrorists on either the Republican or Loyalist side.

This law is one of the very few pledges that the Tory government can claim to have fulfilled.

Now Labour’s election manifesto says Starmer’s government will repeal the Act because it “denies justice to the families and victims of the Troubles”.

As a caller to a radio phone-in asked Starmer this week, how could it be justice to potentially single out elderly Army veterans for prosecution, when the last Labour government sent “letters of comfort” to more than 150 wanted IRA men, assuring them that they would no longer be prosecuted? (Drew Harris, now Northern Ireland’s Deputy Chief Constable, told a parliamentary committee that 100 of them were suspects in 300 murder cases.)

In reply, Starmer the practised lawyer did his usual keep-talking-say-nothing act, but stood by his party’s promise to repeal the Legacy Act.

This is one of those moments when we get to see the real face of the Labour Party, behind Starmer’s St George’s Day claim to be “the patriotic party now” who won’t “neglect our forces”.

In reality Labour is the party of the woke metropolitan elites, entirely out of touch with the instincts of millions of British people who support our armed forces and want to see our veterans properly looked after, not persecuted.

Reform UK wants to ensure that Britain’s servicemen and women have the resources they need to defend our nation – and that they are respected and supported after they leave the services.

That’s why we would increase defence spending to 3% of national GDP and recruit 30,000 to bring the army up to strength. We would set up a properly funded government department to look after our veterans.

And crucially, once we have Reform MPs, we will introduce a new Armed Forces Justice Bill to protect our servicemen and women on active duty inside and outside the UK from being witch-hunted by human rights lawyers.

A Belfast high court judge has already ruled that the Legacy Act is in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights, and the Irish government is pursuing a case against it before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

Further evidence that Reform is right to demand we withdraw from the Convention and stop EU judges overruling British parliamentary sovereignty.

We already know that we are going to have a Labour government after the July 4th election. We should also know now that Labour will be a threat to Britain’s future as a secure democracy.

Britain is broken. Yet we still have some of the best and bravest armed forces in the world. They need support and respect. Britain needs Reform.