White House pressures Starmer over Lucy Connolly case
The White House has said it is 'monitoring' the case of Lucy Connolly in an escalation of free speech tensions with Sir Keir Starmer.
State department officials are examining the treatment of Connolly, the wife of a Conservative councillor, who was jailed for 31 months over a social media post about the Southport attacks.
Judges threw out an appeal brought by the 42-year-old last week, meaning she will not be released before August.
Campaigners raised her case with Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, as part of a wider effort to challenge what they regard as draconian 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.'
It is the latest sign of Donald Trump's willingness to intervene in domestic British affairs amid a growing transatlantic rift over the protection of freedom of speech.
On Saturday, The Telegraph revealed Mr Trump sent US officials to meet five British pro-life activists over censorship concerns.
The diplomats from the US bureau of democracy, human rights and labor (DRL) travelled to London in March in an effort 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, which is thought to be a point of contention in the White House.
Since then, Connolly's case has raised eyebrows of Trump administration officials who question her conviction and the length of her sentence.
British politicians who have criticised her sentence were praised the White House for its intervention.
Suella Braverman, the former home secretary, 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.'
Connolly expressed her outrage on social media platform X hours after Axel Rudakubana murdered three girls at a Taylor Swift-themed holiday club in Southport.
She posted: '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.'
Connolly deleted the post less than four hours later, but by then it had been viewed 310,000 times. She was arrested on Aug 6 following widespread riots across the country over the stabbing attack, and later jailed for 31 months.
Connolly, who has no previous convictions, also sent another tweet commenting on a sword attack, which read: 'I bet my house it was one of these boat invaders.'
Last week, the Court of Appeal judges said they did not accept that the original sentence for inciting racial hatred was 'manifestly excessive'.
The judges also said they did not accept that Connolly had entered her guilty plea without fully understanding what it entailed.
Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, 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, the Reform UK leader and an ally of Mr Trump, said: 'Our American Republican friends seem to care more about free speech in the United Kingdom than our own government.'
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.'
Sir Keir has been forced to defend Britain's record of free speech in recent months, which has become a point of tension with Trump administration officials.
During his meeting in the Oval Office in February, the Prime Minister claimed 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'.
In a speech at the Munich security conference in February, JD Vance, the US vice-president, cited British pro-life campaigner Adam Smith-Connor, who was convicted for breaching a buffer zone outside an abortion clinic, suggesting 'free speech in Britain and across Europe was in retreat'.
No case has raised concerns in Washington more than the prosecution of Livia Tossici-Bolt, an anti-abortion campaigner whose case threatened to jeopardise Sir Keir's trade deal with the United States.
The 64-year-old praised the Trump administration for its support after she was handed a two-year conditional discharge and ordered to pay £20,026 in costs for breaching a buffer zone around an abortion clinic in Bournemouth.
Her case alarmed leaders within the US state department, which made the highly unusual step of warning Sir Keir that it was 'monitoring' developments closely.
At the time, a source familiar with trade negotiations insisted Ms Tossici-Bolt's arrest was being considered amid Britain's attempt to win an exemption from US tariffs, saying 'no free trade without free speech'.
Spokesmen for the Foreign Office and the Home Office declined to comment.
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