Free at Last

Why Lucy Connolly matters to the Trump administration

Lucy Connolly, thank God, is now free, after serving 12-and-a-half months of a 31-month sentence for an angry Tweet she wrote and then deleted a few hours later, having calmed down sufficiently and regained her senses.

“Mass deportations now, set fire to all the f*cking hotels full of the b*stards for all I care… If that makes me racist so be it,” the 42-year-old wife of a Conservative councillor posted.

It’s not a nice Tweet. An angry Tweet, like I said. But I suppose the British people have a right to be angry about the effects of mass immigration, which they’ve never voted for and in fact voted against, in their millions, time after time but to no effect. It was a repeated manifesto pledge of the British Conservative Party, which governed Britain in various forms for a total of 14 years, to reduce net migration to “the tens of thousands” from the hundreds of thousands and to “regain control of our borders.” Instead of keeping their promises, the Conservatives took the New Labour policy of flooding the country with foreigners to new extremes.

This culminated in the spectacular betrayal of the so-called “Boriswave, when serial shagger Boris Johnson—a man many on the right believed would make a great leader because he can quote the Iliad from memory in pitch-perfect ancient Greek—allowed over a million people, mostly from the Third World, to enter Britain in a single year.

Quidquid delirant reges, plectuntur Archivi. (Yes, that’s Latin not Greek. I know.)

The British people certainly had a right to be angry in late July last year, when Axel Rudakubana walked into a dance class in Southport and started stabbing little girls with a kitchen knife. Three little girls died, and five more were injured seriously, as well as two teachers. Connolly sent her Tweet when it was already known that two little girls had been killed. The third died in hospital the next day.

Initial rumours and reports about the stabber’s identity were wrong, but they were directionally right, of course: Rudakubana is a second-generation Rwandan immigrant. His family fled the country after the genocide and came to the UK in murky circumstances. It’s been suggested the family had to seek refuge in the UK because they were involved in the atrocities, and there have also been persistent rumours that Prime Minister Keir Starmer, then just a humble lawyer, was involved in bringing them here. In a podcast interview with Winston Marshall, Nigel Farage said he knew the truth about the Rudakubana family’s relocation to Britain, and that it would be “earth-shattering,” or words to that effect—but he hasn’t provided any further details.

The murders set off a wave of protests and violence. In response, Starmer addressed the nation on television. He condemned the “far-right thuggery” on display, said that the grievances of ordinary British people about mass immigration “don’t matter,” and promised that anybody involved would face “the full force of the law,” whether they had participated directly or by “whipping up this action online.”

Two days after Starmer’s speech, Connolly was arrested and charged with inciting racial hatred. She was denied bail and pressured to plead guilty. Her state-appointed legal counsel advised her that if she didn’t plead guilty promptly she could be held on remand for months until trial, and that if she were then found guilty she could face a sentence of up to five years in prison.

Tired, disoriented and emotional, desperately wanting to see her family, Connolly did as she was told. She pled guilty.

It did her little good. Connolly’s sentence of 31 months, delivered at lightning speed and in public, was intended to send a clear message, just like all the other sentences passed down on people who had sent angry Tweets or held placards bearing angry slogans accusing the police of being corrupt or even people who simply turned up to watch from the sidelines. They were all to be treated as harshly as those who had fought with police or committed arson.

Connolly is in no doubt that her conviction was inevitable. In her words, the government intended to “hammer” her.

Compare her case to that of Ricky Jones, a Labour councillor who told a large group of counter-protesters during the riots that their opponents should “have their throats cut.” Whereas Connolly directed her comments to the world wide web and to nobody in particular, Ricky Jones directed his to an actual baying mob, the kind of baying mob that goes on to do nasty things to people, like cutting their throats. Thankfully, no throats were cut, but it’s pretty hard to argue Jones wasn’t calling directly for violence. And yet, that’s exactly the verdict a jury reached this month. Jones—who had been granted bail and advised by his expensive lawyers to plead not guilty—walked free. There’s justice for you.

Since her release two days ago, Connolly has already said she wants to pursue a legal case against the police.

“I don’t want to say too much because I need to seek legal advice on that,” she told podcast host Dan Wooton. “But I do think the police were dishonest in what they released and what they said about me, and I will be holding them to account for that.”

Intriguingly, she also told Wooton that she’s set to meet today with members of the Trump administration, who have taken a keen interest in her case. She said President Trump’s lawyers are “very interested in the way things are going in the UK.” They’re “big advocates for free speech,” she added.