A childminder who was jailed for 31 months after calling for hotels housing asylum seekers to be set on fire after the Southport attacks has lost an appeal against her sentence at the court of appeal.
Lucy Connolly, who is married to a former Conservative councillor, said in an X post in July last year: “Mass deportation now, set fire to all the fucking hotels full of the bastards for all I care … if that makes me racist so be it.”
The post came after three girls were killed in a knife attack at a holiday club in Southport on 29 July, sparking nationwide unrest. It was viewed 310,000 times in three and a half hours before Connolly deleted it.
In a written judgment published on Tuesday, the appeal court judge Lord Justice Holroyde said: “There is no arguable basis on which it could be said that the sentence imposed by the judge was manifestly excessive. The application for leave to appeal against sentence therefore fails and is refused.”
He said the principal ground for appeal “was substantially based on a version of events put forward by the applicant which we have rejected”.
The former childminder was sentenced at Birmingham crown court last October after pleading guilty to a charge of inciting racial hatred.
She is married to Raymond Connolly, who was a Tory councillor for West Northamptonshire but lost his seat in May this year.
The court heard that the day before Connolly was arrested, she sent a WhatsApp message saying the “raging tweet about burning down hotels has bit me on the arse lol”. She also said she would “play the mental health card” if arrested, and would deny responsibility for the post if asked.
Naeem Valli, prosecuting, said Connolly, who had no previous conviction, also sent a message saying she intended to work her notice period as a childminder “on the sly” despite being deregistered.
She sent another tweet commenting on a sword attack that read: “I bet my house it was one of these boat invaders.”
Giving evidence from HMP Drake Hall in Eccleshall, Staffordshire, last week, Connolly told the court of appeal that she had been “really angry, really upset” when she posted the tweet and had been “distressed that those children had died”.
She told the judges she knew how the parents felt having lost her son about 14 years ago. “Those parents still have to live a life of grief,” she said. “It sends me into a state of anxiety and I worry about my children.”
