Senior Conservatives, including a former prime minister, have called for the release of the FSU member Lucy Connolly, who was jailed for a social media comment made in the wake of the Southport murders. The Telegraph has the story.
Suella Braverman, the former home secretary, said the 31-month jail sentence imposed on Lucy Connolly, a childminder from Northampton, was “excessive” and claimed that she was the victim of a “politicised two-tier justice system”.
She said she should not be in prison, with her comments later supported by Liz Truss and Bob Blackman, the chairman of the influential 1922 Committee.
Connolly, 42, was jailed last October after admitting inciting racial hatred over her post on X made hours after the Southport killings in which she spoke of mass deportations and setting fire to asylum hotels “for all I care”.
“I feel physically sick knowing what these [Southport] families will now have to endure. If that makes me racist, so be it,” she wrote.
Connolly took the post down within four hours after thinking better of what she had written in the heat of the moment, but not before it had been viewed 310,000 times and screenshots of it had been taken. She was interviewed by police on Aug 6 and charged three days later.
She has been in jail ever since, having so far failed to secure release on temporary licence (ROTL) for home visits to her sick husband, who is a Tory councillor, and 12-year-old daughter, despite becoming eligible five months ago.
Connolly is seeking to appeal her sentence on the basis that the trial judge made a mistake over categorising the severity of her crime, and failed to give sufficient weight to her mitigating circumstances, including her emotional sensitivity to children’s deaths after the loss of her 19-month-old son in a hospital blunder.
Mrs Braverman said: “Lucy Connolly is a victim of a politicised two-tier justice system in Starmer’s Britain. She should not be in prison.
“Yes, her comments were crass, tasteless and vile, and I disagree with them. Lucy deleted them quickly and apologised for her error of judgment. That is why the sentence of 31 months’ custody for her first-time offence seems excessive.
“She has deliberately been made an example of to intimidate others into silence. [George] Orwell was out by 40 years. Otherwise, he was spot on.”
Ms Truss said: “Lucy Connolly should be released immediately and reunited with her family.
“The severity of her sentence is completely unjustifiable and a shocking example of two-tier justice which now prevails in Britain.
“Tony Blair’s constitutional vandalism in the mid-2000s abolished judicial accountability. We are now suffering the consequences of a system that has been captured by leftist ideology.
“Judicial appointments should be the responsibility of a democratically accountable Lord Chancellor – as they were prior to 2005.”
Their interventions came after Connolly’s case was brought to light following a Telegraph interview with her husband, Ray.
Connolly was initially held in HMP Peterborough, where her attempts to secure either ROTL or release on home detention curfew, which would have involved her being electronically tagged, failed.
Probation documents suggest her application for ROTL was delayed until a risk assessment could be done, but there have also been indications that prison bosses have resisted it on the grounds of the media or public interest in her case.
One internal note said: “It is not necessarily going to happen due to the public interest.” Another said: “The media interest has been raised as an issue in terms of any future ROTL applications.”
Prison service sources denied Connolly’s application for ROTL had been blocked and said it was being considered by the governor at HMP Drake Hall in Staffordshire, where she was transferred in January.
Worth reading in full.
