A Tory councillor’s wife who called for hotels housing migrants to be set alight is expected to break her silence today after being released from prison.
Lucy Connolly, 42, will give interviews to the media for the first time after leaving HMP Peterborough yesterday.
The childminder pleaded guilty to inciting racial hatred after posting a hate-tweet on X on the day of the Southport attacks in August 2024, but served less than half her sentence.
Her post, which was viewed more than 300,000 times in the four hours before she deleted it, said: ‘Mass deportation now, set fire to all the f****** hotels full of the b******* for all I care… if that makes me racist so be it.’
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The post was prompted by false rumours which circulated on social media following the murder of three girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class, which suggested the attacker was an illegal immigrant.
Connolly, who is married to West Northamptonshire councillor Raymond Connolly, was sentenced to 31 months in prison last October.
In May, she lost an appeal to reduce her sentence.
The mum was released on license after serving 40% of her sentence and left in a white privatehire car.
The childminder’s social media post was uploaded hours after Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, Bebe King, six, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, were all killed by Axel Rudakubana, who was aged 17 at the time.
The attack on the class injured eight other children and two adults.
It triggered rioting across the country, leading to hundreds of prison sentences.
Connolly’s imprisonment was highly controversial, with her supporters claiming she was made a scapegoat for last summer’s disorder and given an unfairly long jail term.
Her husband Ray said she ‘paid a very high price for making a mistake’.
After her release, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch called Connolly’s sentence ‘harsher than the sentences handed down for bricks thrown at police or actual rioting’.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer has defended her conviction, saying he would ‘always support’ the UK’s justice system.
He added: ‘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.
‘But I am equally against incitement to violence against other people. I will always support the action taken by our police and courts to keep our streets and people safe.’
However Court of Appeal judges slapped down arguments to reduce her agreed her sentence in May.
Dismissing her appeal, Lord Justice Holroyde said: ‘There is no arguable basis on which it could be said that the sentence imposed by the judge was manifestly excessive.
‘The application for leave to appeal against sentence therefore fails and is refused.’
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