Tory councillor’s wife guilty after calling for asylum seeker hotel to be set on fire | UK | News

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Lucy Connolly, the wife of a Conservative Party councillor, has pleaded guilty at Northampton Crown Court to publishing a social media post stirring up racial hatred against asylum seekers.

On July 29, the day of the Southport knife killings, she posted on X saying: “Mass deportation now, set fire to all the f****** hotels full of the bas***** for all I care… If that makes me racist, so be it.”

Connolly later apologised for making the post and acting on “false and malicious” information and it appears the post has now been deleted from her X account.

She is the wife of Conservative West Northamptonshire councillor Raymond Connolly. He watched from the public gallery in courtroom four at Northampton Crown Court as she pleaded guilty to publishing threatening or abusive material intending to stir up racial hatred.

Connolly, a 41-year-old childminder of Parkfield Avenue, Northampton, entered her guilty plea via a video-link to HMP Peterborough.

Wearing a flower-patterned short-sleeved dress, Connolly spoke only to enter her plea and confirm that she could hear the judge during a hearing lasting seven minutes.

A previous hearing was told Connolly posted a message to X, on the day three girls were stabbed to death in Southport, which read: “Mass deportation now, set fire to all the f****** hotels full of the bastards for all I care … If that makes me racist, so be it.”

Adjourning Lucy Connolly’s case for sentence at Birmingham Crown Court on October 17, Judge Adrienne Lucking KC told her the ordering of pre-sentence reports was no indication of the likely sentence.

The judge said the case was being transferred to Birmingham to avoid any potential appearance of bias given Connolly’s husband held a political post in the local area.

Judge Lucking told Connolly: “Sentencing will entirely be a matter for the judge on the next occasion but it’s likely to be a substantial custodial sentence.

“In the meantime, you are remanded in custody.”

Connolly made her social media post on the same day little girls Bebe King, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and Alice Dasilva Aguiar, aged nine, were killed after they went to a Taylor Swift-themed dance club in Southport, Merseyside, on July 29.

The suspect, later named as Axel Muganwa Rudakubana, 17, was wrongly said to be an asylum seeker in a slew of misinformation posts spread online in the hours after the attack.

Speaking after violent unrest broke out across the country, Sir Keir Starmer warned social media companies about wrong information being pushed out to the public.

He said: “Inciting violence online is a criminal offence and that is not a matter of free speech. It is a criminal offence. Clearly, in relation to platform providers, there’s a balance to be struck.”

A plea and trial preparation hearing for Rudakubana, who was born in Cardiff, has been set for Friday October 25 at Liverpool Crown Court.

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