Tory councillor's wife will STAY in jail for urging rioters to ‘set fire to migrant hotels' after appeal thrown out
A TORY councillor's wife will stay in jail after urging rioters to set fire to migrant hotels in a social media rant.
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The 41-year-old childminder wrote: "Mass deportation now, set fire to all the f****** hotels full of the b******* for all I care...
"If that makes me racist, so be it."
She was jailed for 31 months in October after admitting publishing threatening or abusive material intending to stir up racial hatred.
Connolly launched bid against her "harsh" sentence but this was today thrown out by Court of Appeal judges.
They ruled "there is no arguable basis on which it could be said that the sentence imposed by the judge was manifestly excessive".
Connolly shared a call to arms following the deaths of Bebe King, six, nine-year-old Alice Dasilva Aguiar and Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, in Southport on July 29.
Posts wrongly claimed monster Axel Rudakubana was a Muslim asylum seeker when he was actually born in Cardiff and raised Christian.
Riots erupted across the country as thugs clashed with police and targeted hotels housing asylum seekers.
After her post, Connolly sent a WhatsApp joking it had "bitten me on the a**e, lol".
She also said if she were to get arrested over it, she would "play the mental health card".
Connolly is married to Raymond Connolly, who is Conservative vice chair of the committee on adult social care at West Northamptonshire Council.
He defended his wife after she pleaded guilty - saying the case had been "traumatic" for her and their three children.
Mr Connolly revealed their son died in 2012 after a series of NHS blunders so when his wife sees any child get harmed, "she will kick off".
The councillor also branded Connolly "an upset housewife" and "just a middle aged mother" who got dragged into the situation by misinformation spreading online.
He added: "The stuff I hear is not really Lucy, she's probably the opposite of what she's having to admit to but she knows she's overstepped the mark and there's consequences for it," he said.
"Hopefully she'll be able to learn from this and move on with her life."
Connolly also tried to make a U-turn on her vile comments - claiming she was acting on "false and malicious" information.
But the Crown Prosecution Service said she told police she did not like immigrants in her custody interview.
Frank Ferguson, head of the CPS special crime and counter terrorism unit, said: 'During police interview Lucy Connolly stated she had strong views on immigration, told officers she did not like immigrants and claimed that children were not safe from them.
"It is not an offence to have strong or differing political views, but it is an offence to incite racial hatred – and that is what Connolly has admitted doing.
"The prosecution case included evidence which showed that racist tweets were sent out from Mrs Connolly's X account both in the weeks and months before the Southport attacks – as well as in the days after.
"Connolly wrongly thought that she could escape justice by hiding behind a screen, but today she has pleaded guilty and admitted her crime. She will now face the consequences of her actions."
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