Sir Keir Starmer has defended the sentence given to Lucy Connolly, who was jailed for inciting racial hatred in the aftermath of the Southport terror attack, after her appeal against her 31-month sentence was rejected.
The Prime Minister said he was against “incitement to violence against other people”, when asked about Connolly’s case by Independent MP Rupert Lowe (Great Yarmouth). Her Court of Appeal application against her jail term was dismissed yesterday by three judges at the Royal Courts of Justice.
She had posted on X on the day of the murder of three children by Axel Rudakubana in Southport: “Mass deportation now, set fire to all the f****** hotels full of the bastards for all I care… if that makes me racist so be it.”
Independent MP Rupert Lowe (Great Yarmouth) asked if Sir Keir thought Connolly’s jailing was an “efficient or fair use” of prison.
Speaking at Prime Minister’s Questions, Sir Keir said: “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.
“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.”
Mr Lowe had said: “Does the Prime Minister agree that imprisoning Lucy Connolly, a young mother with a 12-year-old daughter for one foolish social media post, soon deleted, is clearly not an efficient or fair use of prison?”
Connolly’s post was viewed 310,000 times in three-and-a-half hours before she deleted it.
Connolly told the Court of Appeal that during discussions with her barrister at the crown court she did not understand that by pleading guilty she was accepting that she intended to incite violence.
However Lord Justice Holroyde, one of the three appeal judges presiding over her case said that in her evidence to them, the judges found Connolly to be “intelligent and articulate”, and they were “unable” to accept that she “entered her guilty plea with no understanding of what it entailed”.
Connolly, of Northampton, was arrested on August 6, by which point she had deleted her social media account, but other messages which included further racist remarks were uncovered by officers who seized her phone.
In a written judgment on Tuesday, 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.”
