BBC Newsnight Panellist Slams Claims Jailed Tory Councillor Is Political Prisoner
A BBC Newsnight panellist destroyed claims that a Tory councillor's wife jailed over a tweet she posted during last summer's riots is a political prisoner.
Lucy Connolly called for 'mass deportation now' amid false rumours that an illegal immigrant had murdered three young girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport.
'Set fire to all the fucking hotels full of the bastards for all I care, while you're at it take the treacherous government and all the politicians with them,' Connolly posted on X.
'I feel physically sick knowing what these families will now have to endure. If that makes me racist so be it.'
She eventually deleted the post later the same day, but was jailed for 31 months after pleading guilty to inciting racial hatred.
Her appeal against the sentence was rejected by the Supreme Court last week, prompting fresh complaints from the likes of Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson.
The Reform UK leader said: 'I want to make it absolutely clear: Lucy Connolly should not be in prison.'
But on Newsnight, Labour peer Ayesha Hazarika demolished the argument that she had been wrongly jailed.
She said: 'If she had just said the despicable, racist things which she had tweeted on a regular basis, that is fine, that is her right.
She might hate people like me, a Muslim person like me, the colour of my skin, she might hate that. That is her right.
But when she says to go and burn down hotels where people like me, brown skinned people, anyone else might be, that's when she crosses the line.
'You can say your hateful, horrible things, but if you then go, when we are in the middle of a tinderbox situation, where half the country is about the erupt into violence, and you literally incite violence while people are committing acts of violence, I don't understand why people are so confused about this case.'
She added: 'The idea that this country is not a free country is completely and utterly ludicrous. That woman was inciting violence. She is free to think her horrible, racist thoughts. That is fine. What she isn't allowed to do is go and incite violence.'
"That woman was inciting violence. She is free to think her horrible, horrible, racist thoughts. That is fine. What she isn't allowed to do is go and incite violence." Labour peer Ayesha Hazarika on the Lucy Connolly case. #Newsnightpic.twitter.com/m5mQd2dyOQ
— BBC Newsnight (@BBCNewsnight) May 28, 2025
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