Why The Repeal of the Legacy Act is a Masterclass in Moral Grandstanding

Virtue isn’t what you shout about. It’s what you quietly do, even when nobody is watching. Labour’s plan fails that test.

The Labour Government has made it a priority to repeal the Legacy Act, supposedly to right historic wrongs in Northern Ireland and to re-centre “human rights” in public policy.

But scratch the surface and you’ll see this is less about justice and more about moral posturing — what philosophers Justin Tosi and Brandon Warmke call moral grandstanding.

Moral grandstanding using public moral talk to signal one’s own virtue — not to genuinely solve problems.

The grandstander wants to be seen as caring about justice, to bask in the warm glow of public approval, and to claim a special moral status. This is not a fringe accusation; it’s a widespread phenomenon in modern politics, where politicians compete not to do the right thing, but to appear more virtuous than the rest.

The main features of grandstanding are all on display here:

• Piling on: The government repeats well-worn slogans about “justice for victims” and “ending impunity,” adding nothing new to the debate, but ensuring they are counted on the “right side of history.”

• Ramping up: Each public statement becomes more extreme, with increasingly heated demands for prosecutions, regardless of the practical or legal realities, in order to outdo predecessors and rivals in perceived virtue.

• Excessive outrage: We see choreographed displays of indignation, as if emotional spectacle is a substitute for reasoned policy.

• Claims of self-evidence: Opponents are dismissed as morally deficient — or naïve in the extreme — as if there could be no respectable grounds for upholding the Act or for wanting closure over perpetual persecution .

This is all designed to make the government look “morally respectable”—not to deliver real solutions or reconciliation.

Grandstanding isn’t just annoying. It’s corrosive.

• It breeds cynicism. People come to believe that moral language is just a tool for self-promotion, not genuine problem-solving. When everything is about who can shout loudest about “rights,” the public starts to tune out — even when the issues are serious.

• It causes outrage exhaustion. When every announcement is framed as a moral emergency, people become numb to real injustice. The cycle of ever-increasing rhetoric cheapens the meaning of moral conviction itself.

• It drives polarisation. Instead of debate, we get a moral arms race: whoever is most extreme is seen as most righteous, leaving no room for moderation, compromise, or honest disagreement.

The real victims are truth and genuine justice. The Legacy Act — flawed though it may be — was meant to draw a line under decades of conflict, recognising that no legal process can fully satisfy every grievance or resolve every historical ambiguity. Indeed, some even talked about it being time to move on and stop opening old wounds.

By indulging in moral grandstanding, Labour is not only undermining the fragile settlement, but is also disrespecting the hard-won peace and the practical needs of reconciliation. The result is not justice, but endless recrimination and the reopening of old wounds for political capital.

If public discourse is to mean anything, it has to be about solutions, not self-promotion. True virtue in public life is not about moral exhibitionism, but about facing hard realities, making difficult trade-offs, and respecting the complexity of history. Grandstanding has no place in that.

Repealing the Legacy Act in this fashion isn’t progress. It’s theatre.