Conservative politician’s wife sentenced to prison for racist social media tirade after ‘mental card’ fails

The wife of a conservative British politician was sentenced to a yr in prison for inciting racial hatred on social media.

Lucy Connolly, a 41-year-old nanny from West Northhampshire, called for the burning of hotels housing asylum seekers and mass deportations in a July 29 post on X.

Connolly’s offensive statements were published on the identical day because the Southport stabbing attacks, when three young girls were killed and lots of others injured in a stabbing attack at a Taylor Swift-inspired dance and yoga event within the north-west town of Southport.

The perpetrator, a teenage boy whose parents were from Rwanda, was falsely identified as an illegal immigrant, prompting riots by far-right groups to break out across the country. In one incident, conservative protesters violently clashed with police near a Southport mosque, setting fire to vehicles, throwing bottles at authorities and injuring police dogs. CNN.

According to Connolly’s tweet comments in regards to the judgmentread: “Now mass deportations, burn down all the fucking hotels full of bastards for all I care, and while you’re at it, take the traitorous government and politicians with you. I feel physically sick knowing what these families will now have to endure. If that makes me a racist, so be it.”

The nanny’s tirade, which was viewed by 310,000 people, immediately put her on the authorities’ radar and ultimately proved to be her undoing, as presiding judge Melbourne Inman said “intended to incite serious violence” Her racist abuse wasn’t limited to one post.

Police found inflammatory comments on her social media each before and after the Southport stabbings.

Connolly, who has no previous convictions, reportedly commented on the sword attack on X, writing: “I bet it was one of those boat raiders in my house.” According to the BBC, she also referred to a video published by a far-right activist through which he says: “I think he’s Somali” and is accompanied by a vomiting emoji.

Before she was arrested on August 6, she deleted her X account and turned to WhatsApp, boasting that she would “play the mental health card” and deny responsibility if police arrested her. The day before her arrest, she joked: “…the angry tweet about burning down hotels bit me in the ass, lol.”

Connolly and her husband, Tory councilor Raymond Connolly, lost their son in a “terrible way,” her defense attorney said, adding that “it can only have a drastically damaging effect on someone,” news outlets report. Her husband Raymond he previously told the BBC his wife was “a good person and not a racist,” explaining that she posted a “stupid, spur-of-the-moment tweet out of frustration and quickly deleted it.”

“He has children from Somalia and Bangladesh that he takes care of and loves them as his own,” he added.

Despite threatening to use her “mental health card”, the court found no evidence of a mental disorder, and Connolly ultimately pleaded guilty to intent to incite racial hatred. When questioned by police, she admitted that she didn’t like immigrants and stated that children weren’t secure of their presence, investigator Frank Ferguson said via the web site BBC.

In the judge’s remarks, he placed Connolly squarely amongst those “who will seek an excuse for violence and disorder causing injury, damage, loss and fear to completely innocent members of society, and sentences for those that incite racial hatred and disharmony in our society are aimed toward purpose of each punishment and deterrence.

She was given a 31-month sentence, of which 40 percent might be spent in prison after which suspended. Her husband can also be facing backlash after calling for the resignation of Mike Reader, the Labor MP for Northampton South.