Published by The i Paper (25th August, 2025)
There is something profoundly depressing about the case of Lucy Connolly, the childminder sentenced to 31 months in prison for an inflammatory post on social media after the Southport attack last year and the riots that followed. Yet it does not really concern the issues of free speech claimed by her supporters, let alone the ridiculous claim that this person – who sought to stoke murderous arson attacks against asylum seekers – was a political prisoner thrown behind bars by the prime minister, as she claimed in a newspaper interview after her release. Instead, her lionisation shows how much the hatred promulgated by the far-right infects public debate while exposing the corrosive and toxic tribalism that pollutes our country.
This foolish woman, wife of a former Tory councillor, should not be hailed as any kind of heroine. At a tense time – when a shocked country reeled over a lethal knife attack on girls attending a dance workshop and as wild rumours circulated over the assailant’s identity – Connolly fired off an expletive-filled tweet urging people to set fire to hotels housing asylum seekers. “If that makes me racist, so be it,” her post concluded. These incendiary words were viewed 310,000 times and reposted 940 times before being deleted three and a half hours later. She was arrested several days later and charged with an offence carrying a maximum seven-year sentence.
Connolly pleaded guilty at her trial, admitting to incitement of serious violence that could have led to deaths of human beings. The court of appeal did not believe her claim of failing to understand the consequences of this plea. At her trial, it emerged she had made previous racist statements, told a friend her “raging tweet” had “bit me on the arse lol”, and said she would “play the mental health card” if arrested. There are also claims she was triggered by the death of her child 12 years earlier. Having lost my own daughter last year, I can sympathise with the enduring agony of parental grief, but find it puzzling to suggest this might make anyone wish to inflict such pain on others.
With grim inevitability, her case was jumped on by the far right. “If you support Lucy Connolly, you’re on the right side of history,” claims hate-monger Tommy Robinson (whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon). His stance was echoed by all the usual hard-right suspects in Reform UK and the Tories, who look more diminished by the day as they follow the footsteps of Nigel Farage. Shadow home secretary Chris Philp even pitifully claimed a jury’s decision to clear a Labour councillor who pleaded not guilty over offensive comments was “alarming” evidence of two-tier justice compared with Connolly.
There is valid argument that Connolly should not have been sent to prison – like almost all other women behind bars in a creaking judicial system. Most committed non-violent offences far less serious than her provocative agitation, posing no threat to society, yet if handed custodial sentences are more likely to re-offend than if given good community punishments. A majority have mental health or addiction issues; many have experienced trauma such as domestic violence. They are more likely than men to self-harm while cooped up in cells – and like Connolly, often have dependent children who suffer when their mother disappears.
Yet many similar arguments apply to male inmates – as proven by far more effective systems abroad, such as in Norway with its humane prisons, focus on rehabilitation and low recidivism rates. Our prisons are costly, overcrowded and often ineffective, stuffed with damaged citizens failed by care, health and school systems alongside the gangsters, killers and rapists who deserve severe punishment. We have the highest per capita jail rates in Western Europe. And as former Tory justice minister David Gauke said in his recent government review, this is partly due to “prison populism” as politicians push for tougher sentences.
So guess who are the worst culprits today? Yes, the same right-wing headbangers who are complaining about Connolly’s sentence while demanding longer jail terms and more prison places, with Farage making puerile threats to be “the toughest party on law and order… this country has ever seen”.
Similar hypocrisy lies behind the free speech furore as warriors of the hard right fulminate over Connolly’s supposed martyrdom. Yet most stay silent when people are branded antisemites for protesting atrocities in Gaza or demonstrating against the Palestine Action terror ban. Take former Tory home secretary Suella Braverman: she described protests for a ceasefire in Gaza as “hate marches” and said waving a Palestinian flag could be a criminal offence, calling on police to take “zero tolerance approach to Antisemitism.’’ Now she says Connolly’s case shows free speech is “on life support under Labour”.
We see the White House also stepping into this swamp even as it prostrates itself before Vladimir Putin’s repressive dictatorship and ruthlessly abuses federal power to target domestic critics. The serpentine Vice-president JD Vance claimed with breathtaking hypocrisy earlier this year that free speech “is in retreat” in Britain. Now Connolly says she is meeting with US administration officials while Farage plans to use her case when testifying next month to a Congressional committee on threats to free expression in Britain. The Reform UK leader keeps running down our country while claiming to be a true patriot.
Human rights should be immutable. Although it is sadly easy to identify similar examples of hypocrisy on the extreme left, mainstream politicians and commentators should be wary of turning this foolish person into a political pin-up at a time when protests are exploding over asylum hotels and our own flags being weaponised on streets. And indeed when Islam, one of the world’s great religions – practised by millions of Britons – gets branded “medieval” and antithetical to the British way of life following grooming scandals, despite the string of abuse cases, paedophilia horrors, and institutional cover-ups that plague Christian churches.
Ultimately, it is playing with fire to flirt with the far-right in such an angry, broken, and tribalised nation.