This Is Britain: Mother Jailed For 2 Years Because of a Tweet She Deleted After 4 Hours

If it seems like we here at Hot Air have been writing a lot about Britain lately, that’s because we have been. 

Ever since America and our British brothers got beyond those little spats we had in 1776 and 1812, the two countries have been as tight as brothers. We occasionally bicker like family members, but when the chips are down, we stick together. John Locke and Adam Smith could have designed our political system, and we have even done a favor or two for our British brothers.

We have even improved their language, although they mostly ignore our suggestions for how to improve it. Still, we try out of love. 

Unfortunately, Great Britain isn’t quite so great anymore and is looking less and less like a family member and more and more like a copy of Communist China, but with a less rational immigration policy. 

🔴 ‘An impulsive social media post landed Lucy Connolly with a 31-month sentence – her treatment is a testament to our injustice system’ | Writes @AllisonPearson

Read more ⬇️https://t.co/UyOCeG2Hhh pic.twitter.com/9jYt2VfbOy

— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) April 4, 2025

Child rapists are being excused from responsibility because they come from a savage culture. Tens of thousands march through the streets of London calling for the establishment of a Caliphate while people who criticize that are being tossed in jail. Mothers who fear for their children and speak out find themselves in the dock because, well, we can’t offend the Muslims. 

It is many years since I clambered into a cage in Cambridge’s King’s Parade for Amnesty International and stared glumly through the bars at a photographer who snapped me for the front page of the student paper. On that drizzly, damp day, we were trying to draw attention to the plight of prisoners in authoritarian countries where people could be thrown into jail for no reason, except to deter other critics of the regime, and denied their basic human rights.

In the past few days, I’ve found myself wondering what that idealistic young student would have thought if you’d told her that, 40 years in the future, she would be writing about a woman thrown into jail in our own country largely to act as a warning to others. A widely-respected and adored childminder described by one parent as “the kindest British person I’ve met”, a mother of two children (one living, one dead), a carer to a sick husband, by whose side she also appeared in his role as a Tory councillor.

As I write this, that woman is not only serving a sentence many legal experts consider to be outrageously harsh, but is being denied the opportunity for time at home with her family which is granted to jailmates around her who are guilty of actual physical harm. “You’ve upset a lot of people, Lucy,” one probation officer explained when she asked why she was being denied ROTL (Release on Temporary Licence).

If the name Lucy Connolly rings a bell it’s because she was one of the 1,500-plus people arrested in connection with the social unrest which followed the July 29 Southport massacre of three little girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class. In fact, that’s not strictly accurate. Mrs Connolly, then aged 41 – she turned 42 in prison in January – played no part in the rioting, but a tweet she posted on the day when Elsie Dot Stancombe, Bebe King and Alice da Silva Aguiar were murdered by Axel Rudakubana was enough to get her arrested eight days later, and charged under Section 19 of the Public Order Act 1986, with publishing material intending to stir up racial hatred.

“You’ve upset many people.” Off to jail. For over two years. 

Lucy put up an intemperate tweet, thought better of it, and deleted it four hours later. But somebody screenshot it and sent it to the police, and she was arrested, tried, and tossed in jail. In it she assumed–it turned out quite correctly–that it was a Muslim immigrant (who turned out to be a follower of al Qaeda with plans to commit terrorist acts) who committed the stabbings. The police denied that vociferously to calm things down, and in the service of that lie they started arresting Brits. 

This happens all the time in the UK. 30 Brits a day are arrested for what they say. Thirty. Many of them get prison sentences, while people who rape children are let go because raping children is fine and dandy in their culture. 

ADMIN POST.

More than 30 Brits a day are being arrested over “offensive” social media posts an investigation has revealed. @JDVance was right. pic.twitter.com/hem5JSA2I6

— Tommy Robinson 🇬🇧 (@TRobinsonNewEra) April 5, 2025

Tommy Robinson, a controversial journalist, is sitting in solitary confinement for screening a documentary that he was enjoined from showing in Britain. Few people seem to care, but reports are that his mental and physical health are failing, as would be expected. He did indeed violate an injunction, but his sentence is one more to be expected in Xi’s China than a liberal democracy. 

ADMIN POST.

Tommy Robinson has now been in solitary confinement for over 5 months!

The legal limit being just 72hrs before review.

He’s been refused to even challenge it.

His crime?

Showing a film exposing the corrupt judiciary, and posting it for YOU to decide; https://t.co/8HENABhp3t pic.twitter.com/gJmbihQqSs

— Tommy Robinson 🇬🇧 (@TRobinsonNewEra) April 5, 2025

People are getting arrested for…praying. Others are getting arrested for silently holding signs. A street preacher has been arrested for reading from the Bible. 

Let’s deal with the inevitable “but she was in a ‘buffer zone’” comments:

Buffer zone laws in the UK are censorious. They ban the peaceful expression of ideas based on viewpoint.

But even accepting them by their own rules, the zone prohibits “harassment,” “intimidation,” and…

— Kristen Waggoner (@KristenWaggoner) April 4, 2025

These sorts of things have been happening across the Western world, and the Biden administration subsidized censorship organizations in Europe and the United States to promote those policies both over there and right here in America. 

These policies are not outliers anymore. The liberal consensus is now pro-censorship, which is one of the reasons why so many once-liberal journalists have departed from mainstream publications that enforce a narrative and suppress inconvenient facts and opinions. 

Is there anything we can do? Well, the Trump administration has made it clear that for the UK at least free trade and free speech are inextricably entwined, and Keir Starmer has already pulled back on a policy to track “Non-crime hate speech.” 

Of course, that leaves hate speech they deem a crime, which seems to be a very broad category.