Lucy Connolly FREED after 9 months in prison for 'racist' tweet

Lucy Connolly was released from prison on Thursday morning, after serving nine months of her sentence in jail. The 42-year-old former childminder from Northampton was driven from HMP Peterborough in a taxi today, a prison source said. The wife of Tory councillor Ray Connolly had pleaded guilty to a charge of inciting racial hatred after publishing a tweet during last summer's riots, and was handed a 31-month sentence in October. She was jailed after, in light of false rumours circulating online that the Southport killer was an asylum seeker, she wrote on X: "Mass deportation now, set fire to all the f****** hotels full of the ba*****s for all I care ... if that makes me racist so be it." The murderer of three girls in Southport was later named as UK-born teenager Axel Rudakubana.

Her case sparked a major free speech debate, with some criticising the sentence as excessive. Her husband, a Northamptonshire town councillor, said his wife had "paid a very high price for making a mistake". He also described the dismissal of a bid to challenge her sentence at the Court of Appeal in May as "shocking and unfair".

Ms Connolly pleaded guilty to inciting racial hatred by publishing and distributing "threatening or abusive" written material at Birmingham Crown Court in October.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer has defended her sentence, telling MPs in Prime Minister's Questions that he is "against incitement to violence" and "will always support the action taken by our police to keep our streets and people safe".

He added: "Sentencing is a matter for our courts and I celebrate the fact that we have independent courts in this country. I am strongly in favour of free speech, we've had free speech in this country for a very long time and we protect it fiercely."

The 42-year-old was arrested on August 6, 2024, by which point her social media account had been deleted - although not before her post had been viewed 310,000 times.

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."