Secretaries of State come, and they go – some to greater things, and others to oblivion.
People here just have to hope they do the minimum amount of damage when they are living it up like colonial governors in Hillsborough Castle.
With a few exceptions, they have been as much use as a plastic griddle on a turf fire.
If there’s an opportunity to make things worse, they will generally take it – guided by the malign influence of the Northern Ireland Office back in London.
In 1990, then Secretary of State Peter Brooke said Britain had “no selfish economic or strategic interest” in holding on to the north.
That statement is regarded as one of the pivotal moments of the peace process.
But actions matter more than words, and time after time, British policy in Ireland has been determined by its narrow self-interest.
The simple truth is that the UK is a country which still thinks and behaves like a colonial power.
Its lack of self-awareness is particularly noxious here because Britain is not, and never can be, an honest broker.
That Britain is part of the problem is indisputable; but worse, it has never really tried to address the consequences of its occupation of Ireland and its actions here – not least complicity in the murder of many innocent people who were sacrificed during the Troubles.
Fans of ‘whataboutery’ will cite countless examples of innocents slaughtered by republicans, and rightly so. But that is to miss the point. States have a duty of care to those they govern.
Nowhere in the Convention of Human Rights does it justify the deployment of state forces against civilians. Indeed Article 3 is explicit: “No-one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”
And that brings us back to the current NIO overlord, Hilary Benn – son of one of the 20th century’s most consequential politicians, and living proof that good judgement is not hereditary.
On Saturday, Benn used these pages to ladle emollient over critics who believe he has sold out on promises to repeal the iniquitous Legacy Act.
Readers familiar with NIO-speak will have been alert to the carefully chosen phrases designed to give the appearance of empathy with Troubles victims while giving enough wriggle room for cover-ups of atrocities by the British state.
After acknowledging that for many, addressing their suffering “remains incomplete”, that their situation has been “made much worse by the lack of answers”, and saying “many are rightly angry” about the Legacy Act; he goes on to say that “there are complex issues to be worked through”, and parliament is looking at them (that’s not reassuring).
He then extols the virtues of the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery – a body without credibility. The commission is the Legacy Act made manifest.
The proverbial dogs in the street know too well that the Legacy Act was the last government’s attempt to give state actors a ‘get out of jail free’ card for their complicity in terror – often carried out in consort with loyalist paramilitaries.
The current government has adopted the same approach as its predecessors to covering up the actions of its spooks, its soldiers and its special forces.
You know whose side the British government is on when you look at the way Benn’s oleaginous master Keir Starmer handled a question about proposed changes to the Act at Prime Minister’s Questions last week.
Asked about claims the government would “write a cheque to compensate Gerry Adams” and other internees, Starmer said: “We will look at every conceivable way to prevent these types of cases claiming damages.”
It was a contemptible way to treat someone instrumental to the success of the peace process.
Anyone who was a victim of British injustice in Ireland – there’s a long queue, and that includes those interned – deserves redress.
Starmer’s cheap crack sits uneasily with Benn’s high-flown closing pledge on Saturday to “do all we can to help society in Northern Ireland, which has come such a long way since 1998, to finally begin to heal the terrible wounds of the past and look to a better future”.
The best – and quickest – way to do that would be for the British government to come clean about the huge abuse of state power throughout the Troubles.
If Starmer and Benn don’t know what happened, they need just ask the dogs in any street.
Anyone who chooses to cover up is no better than those who pulled the triggers and detonated the bombs.