White House pressures Keir Starmer over case of councillor's wife jailed for 'inciting racial hatred'
26 May 2025, 14:21
The White House has said it is "monitoring" the case of Lucy Connolly, who was imprisoned for 31 months over a social media post relating to the Southport attacks.
Listen to this article
Loading audio...
An appeal for the early release of Connolly, the wife of a Conservative councillor who was jailed for inciting racial hatred, was thrown out by judges last week.
The Court of Appeal judges said they did not accept that the original sentence for inciting racial hatred was "manifestly excessive."
Campaigners raised Connolly's case with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio as part of a wider effort to challenge hate speech laws across Europe.
A spokesman for the state department said: “We can confirm that we are monitoring this matter.
“The United States supports freedom of expression at home and abroad, and remains concerned about infringements on freedom of expression.”
Read More: Judge blocks Trump's plan to ban foreign students from Harvard University
Connolly was jailed in October 2024 after she posted on X hours after the attacks in Southport where three children were murdered at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class: "Mass deportation now, set fire to all the f---ing hotels full of the b------s for all I care, while you’re at it, take the treacherous government politicians with them. I feel physically sick knowing what these [Southport] families will now have to endure. If that makes me racist, so be it.”
The post, which was prompted by a false rumour that an illegal immigrants was responsible for the attacks, was viewed over 310,000 times before it was deleted hours later.
She was arrested on August 6 following widespread rioting across the country over the stabbing attack, and was jailed for 31 months.
Connolly also made another post where she commented on a sword attack, saying: "I bet my house it was one of these boat invaders.”
Connolly pled guilty to inciting racial hatred.
The shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick said: "In recent months, shoplifters with hundreds of prior convictions have avoided prison. A domestic abuser with 52 prior offences got off with just a suspended sentence, as did a paedophile with 110,000 indecent images of children."
“And yet Lucy Connolly has received a 31-month prison sentence for an appalling – albeit hastily deleted – message on social media. How on earth can you spend longer in prison for a tweet than violent crime? This crazy disparity will only fuel perception that we have a two-tier justice system where the law is enforced selectively.”
Nigel Farage, leader of Reform UK and ally of US President Donald Trump, said: "Our American Republican friends seem to care more about free speech in the United Kingdom than our own government.”
Former Home Secretary Suella Braverman praised the White House for its intervention. She said: "Lucy Connolly is effectively a political prisoner and should be freed immediately. She made an ill-judged tweet, soon deleted."
"That the US is investigating this case is a sad indictment of the dire state of free speech under Two-Tier Keir. Free speech is in crisis under Labour.”
Lord Young, the general secretary of the Free Speech Union, which helped fund Connolly’s appeal, said: “This is the third national humiliation in a week under Sir Keir Starmer’s premiership.
“Has it really come to this? That the US government now has to monitor human rights abuses in the United Kingdom?
“Britain is rapidly becoming the North Korea of the North Sea.”
The intervention in the Connolly case is the latest freedom of speech-related interference in domestic British affairs by the White House.
In March, US President Donald Trump sent US diplomats to meet five British pro-life activists over censorship concerns.
Officials from the US bureau of democracy, human rights and labor (DRL) travelled to London in March to “affirm the importance of freedom of expression in the UK and across Europe”.
They met with officials from the Foreign Office and challenged Ofcom on the Online Safety Act.
Vice President JD Vance, citing the conviction of British pro-life campaigner Adam Smith-Conner, said in a speech at the Munich security conference in February that “free speech in Britain and across Europe was in retreat”.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer defended the UK's record of free speech during a meeting in the Oval Office in February, when he said there had been free speech “for a very, very long time in the UK, and it will last for a very, very long time."
"Certainly we wouldn’t want to reach across US citizens, and we don’t, and that’s absolutely right. But in relation to free speech in the UK, I’m very proud of our history there”.
The Foreign Office and Home Office declined to comment on the White House's involvement in Connolly's case.