DISPATCHES FROM THE MINISTRY OF LOVE: The Lucy Connolly scandal reveals the folly of policing hatred.
So Lucy Connolly has finally been released from prison, nine months into her 31-month sentence for ‘inciting racial hatred’ on X in the wake of last year’s Southport murders. Good. This childminder from Northampton should never have spent a day in prison, and even so will now serve out the rest of her sentence at home under as-yet-unkown release conditions. Now, we must ensure this authoritarian farce is never repeated.
Let’s start with the obvious. What Connolly tweeted on 29 July 2024, when the bodies of knifeman Axel Rudakubana’s three tiny victims were barely cold, was inexcusable. ‘Set fire to all the fucking hotels full of the bastards for all I care’, she raged to her 9,000 followers. ‘While you’re at it, take the treacherous government and politicians with them… If that makes me racist, so be it.’Like so many others, Connolly was horrified by Southport – not least given that she had previously lost a child herself. Like so many others, she had seen the swirling online misinformation that the killer was a Muslim small-boats migrant. But startlingly few will have begun jabbering darkly online about burning human beings alive – albeit with that caveat, ‘for all I care’.
Was it ugly, bigoted, vile? Obviously. But should she have been locked up for it, held on remand, denied bail – twice? Should she have been handed down, what is believed to be, the longest prison sentence ever issued for a single social-media post – all after she had pleaded guilty, in the vain hope of getting home to her husband and daughter sooner? Obviously not. As a society, we continue to stub our toe on this crucial distinction, with disastrous consequences for all of our freedoms.
Related: Lucy Connolly’s first interview: I was Starmer’s political prisoner.
Connolly has accused Sir Keir Starmer of holding her as a political prisoner in her first interview following her release from jail.
Mrs Connolly, 42, a childminder from Northampton, said it was “bizarre” she had spent more than a year behind bars for posting a tweet inciting racial hatred in the wake of the Southport murders.
Mrs Connolly, a mother-of-two, explained she was “upset and angry beyond belief” and that a “red mist” had clouded her judgment. She accepted the post on X was not her “finest moment” but insisted she did not “advocate violence”.
In an exclusive interview with Allison Pearson, the Telegraph journalist who led the campaign for her release, Mrs Connolly also accused the police of being “dishonest” in allegedly misrepresenting her views on immigration and threatened to bring a legal claim against them.
Mrs Connolly was sentenced to 31 months in prison after pleading guilty to a post that wrongly suggested Axel Rudakubana, who murdered three girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance party in Southport, had been an illegal immigrant.
Mrs Connolly called for “mass deportation now”, adding: “Set fire to all the f—ing hotels full of the b——s for all I care… if that makes me racist so be it.” She removed the tweet after three hours but by that time it had been viewed by 310,000 people.
As a legendary former general once said, if you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine:
— Tommy Robinson 🇬🇧 (@TRobinsonNewEra) August 22, 2025