"I'll raise a glass to Tony Blair and Mo Molem for that!" [presumably the so-called “peace process”]
“Brave wasn't it to offer such concessions to win peace”
If you think, jake, that there is peace in Northern Ireland, think again. I have friends in Carickfergus, just outside Belfast. I visit the Province from time to time and I am in regular contact with my pals. People in Belfast are still being “kneecapped” for being of the wrong religion. Parents still have to walk their children to school by circuitous routes as they cannot go by the shortest route for fear of violence. Housing estates are still fiercely divided along Sectarian lines and the authorities cannot use their housing stock flexibly as violence would erupt if they mixed the "wrong" people together. Yes, the “Troubles” are by no means as severe as they were. But this is mainly because most people among the majority who wanted Sinn Fein (and by association the IRA) to play no part in their government have resigned themselves to the fact that they have been sold down the river. But “peaceful” it ain’t.
The “brave concessions” you mention made by the Blair government were nothing short of appeasement to terrorists secured under the threat of murder and extreme violence towards innocent civilians. That administration would have secured so-called peace at any price as it provided them with, in their view, their legacy. But the legacy for the two-thirds majority in Northern Ireland who wanted the status quo to remain is that they are governed by an assembly which contains convicted terrorists and they are still suffering threats of violence and indeed actual violence as the minority will not allow the majority view to prevail.
So now we face the prospect of Her Majesty the Queen shaking hands with a man convicted of possession of huge sums of explosives and ammunition but who now has become respectable after being afforded high office by means of violence. Nice.