The “principled” Jeremy Corbyn is now appointing his team. Britain’s new ‘shadow’ Chancellor of the Exchequer (opposition finance spokesman) is John McDonnell.

Here (from 2003) is McDonnell giving his take on recent Northern Irish history:

“It’s about time we started honouring those people involved in the armed struggle. It was the bombs and bullets and sacrifice made by the likes of Bobby Sands [a Provisional IRA hunger striker, who starved himself to death: a street is named after him in Tehran] that brought Britain to the negotiating table. The peace we have now is due to the action of the IRA.”….
“The deaths of innocent civilians in IRA attacks is a real tragedy, but…

Ah, always that ‘but’…

“….because of the bravery of the IRA and people like Bobby Sands we now have a peace process.”

And in 2010:

Asked about his career prior to joining parliament, McDonnell said he had once been asked in a warm-up question on the BBC’s Any Questions what if he would do if he found himself in an Ashes to Ashes situation – a reference to the BBC series that sees a modern-day policewoman waking up in the 1980s.
McDonnell told the hustings audience that he had said at the time that he would have liked to go back to that era and “assassinate Thatcher”.
Asked about his comment, McDonnell later told the Guardian: “It was a joke. And it went down as a joke.”

Her Majesty’s loyal (hmmm) opposition is in the best of possible hands.