A British mother imprisoned for venting her anger on X, formerly Twitter, has now lost her bid for early release at the Court of Appeal.
Following the lethal Southport attacks, Lucy Connolly was jailed for 31 months in October 2024. She wrote “mass deportation now” online and urged her followers on X to “set fire” to hotels housing asylum seekers, adding, “If that makes me racist, so be it.”
Before Connolly deleted the ill-advised post, it attracted 310,000 views. Despite the lack of specific details and her subsequent change of heart, the authorities treated the post (and her) as incitement. Jailed at Birmingham Crown Court after pleading guilty to inciting racial hatred, the lost appeal means that she will serve at least 40% of her sentence in prison, before a possible release on licence.
Three Court of Appeal judges described her main appeal as “substantially based on a version of events put forward by the applicant which we have rejected,” in a ruling on Tuesday, May 20th.
Connolly, from Northampton, England, is the wife of a local Conservative Party councillor, recently voted out of West Northamptonshire Council but still on Northampton Town Council.
With prime minister Keir Starmer treating public hostility to the Southport murders as more serious than drug crimes—and pushing for early release schemes to free up space in prison—it appears that the weight of the establishment is against her for what is essentially a speech crime.
On the same day, self-promoting agitator “Tommy Robinson” (Stephen Yaxley Lennon) was scheduled for early release following a previous contempt of court conviction.
