Lucy Connolly’s release from prison has reignited a row over freedom of speech in Britain. The mother-of-one was handed a 31-month sentence for stirring up racial hatred against asylum seekers online on the day of the Southport murders.
Connolly, 42, the wife of Conservative councillor Raymond Connolly, posted on social media before deleting hours later: “Mass deportation now, set fire to all the f****** hotels full of the bastards for all I care … if that makes me racist so be it.” She pleaded guilty to inciting racial hatred by publishing and distributing “threatening or abusive” written material on X and was jailed in October last year.
The former childminder, from Northampton, was ordered to serve 40% of her sentence in prison before being released on licence.
But her case has sparked debate, with some criticising her sentence as excessive and making claims of “two-tier” justice.
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Lord Young of Acton, founder and director of the Free Speech Union, said: “The fact that Lucy Connolly has spent more than a year in prison for a single tweet that she quickly deleted and apologised for is a national scandal, particularly when Labour MPs, councillors and anti-racism campaigners who’ve said and done much worse have avoided jail.
“The same latitude they enjoyed should have been granted to Lucy.”
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said Connolly’s sentence was “harsher than the sentences handed down for bricks thrown at police or actual rioting”.
She compared Connolly’s case with that of Ricky Jones, a suspended Labour councillor who was found not guilty of encouraging violent disorder at an anti-racism rally in the wake of the Southport murders.
Writing on X, Mrs Badenoch said: “Juries are a cornerstone of justice, but we shouldn’t have to rely on them to protect basic freedoms.
“Protecting people from words should not be given greater weight in law than public safety. If the law does this, then the law itself is broken – and it’s time Parliament looked again at the Public Order Act.”
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage described Connolly as a “symbol of Keir Starmer’s authoritarian, broken, two-tier Britain”.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer said sentencing was “a matter for the courts” and that while he was “strongly in favour of free speech”, he was “equally against incitement to violence”.
It comes as Mr Farage has also raised fears over freedom of speech and open debate with the Online Safety Act.
Meanwhile, a Trump administration report last week accused the UK of backsliding on human rights over the past year, citing growing restrictions on free speech.
In the wake of the 2024 Southport attack, the report said government officials “repeatedly intervened to chill speech”.