Lucy Connolly: Northampton childminder married to Tory councillor pleads guilty to stirring up racial hatred
The wife of a Tory councillor has pleaded guilty to publishing written material to stir up racial hatred following the Southport stabbings
Childminder Lucy Connolly, appearing via videolink from HMP Peterborough, admitted making the post about asylum seekers at Northampton Crown Court after she was previously arrested and re-arrested in the first half of August.
She published a post on her X account, which she later deleted, which read: “Mass deportation now, set fire to all the f*****g hotels full of the bastards for all I care… If that makes me racist, so be it.”
Connolly wrote the post on the day of the knife attack in Southport, Merseyside, when a group of children attending a Taylor Swift-themed dance class were attacked.
False information claiming the attacker was a Muslim asylum seeker spread online and led to riots across the UK.
Three young girls were killed in the attack on 29 July, while eight other children and two adults were injured.
Rioting broke out in Southport (pictured) then across the UK after the fatal stabbing of three girls. Pic: PA
Connolly, from Northampton, later apologised for acting on “false and malicious” information and appeared to have subsequently deleted her X account.
She is the wife of Conservative West Northamptonshire councillor Raymond Connolly.
Speaking outside the court, he said he was “relieved” it was over as it had been “traumatic” for his wife and three children.
Mr Connolly said she was “an upset housewife” and “just a middle aged mother” who got dragged into the situation by misinformation spreading online.
“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.”
Mr Connolly added that their son had died so when his wife sees any child get harmed “she will kick off”.
And he said she feels the “Tory tag” is unfair but “she will cope with whatever they throw at her, she’s got strong resilience, she’ll come back a bigger person”.
Their son, Harry, died aged 19 months in 2012 from dehydration after a series of basic errors by NHS medics, an inquest found.
His parents took the toddler to hospital with severe diarrhoea and vomiting, where he was wrongly diagnosed with a stomach upset and sent home before they returned two days later and medical staff turned them away.
Then a GP failed to diagnose the real problem and Mr Connolly woke up at 4am to Harry not breathing.
Elsie Dot Stancombe, Alice Dasilva Aguiar and Bebe King were killed in the attack. Pic: Merseyside Police
People accused of violence or inciting violence during the riots have been fast tracked through the justice system.
In Manchester, the sentencing of a 12-year-old, who cannot be named due to his age, twice involved in the violence was adjourned because his mother has gone on holiday to Ibiza.
District Judge Joanne Hirst told Manchester Magistrates’ Court she was “frankly astonished” that the boy’s mother had decided to fly abroad for a five-day sunshine break, with her son due in court having admitted two counts of violent disorder.
The mother has been issued with a parental summons to appear before the court when the judge passes sentence on 11 September.
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The boy, who was accompanied by his uncle, earlier admitted being part of a mob that attacked a bus outside a hotel housing asylum seekers in Manchester on 31 July.
Days later he was part of a group filmed kicking the windows of a vape shop and throwing a missile at a police van.
The state Department of Environmental Conservation botched the permitting process, but it still gets a do-over.
The UK economy grew by 0.1% between July and September, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
However, despite the small positive GDP growth recorded in the third quarter, the economy shrank by 0.1% in September, dragging down overall growth for the three month period.
The growth was also slower than what had been expected by experts and a drop from the 0.5% growth between April and June, the ONS said.
Economists polled by Reuters and the Bank of England had forecast an expansion of 0.2%, slowing from the rapid growth seen over the first half of 2024 when the economy was rebounding from last year’s shallow recession.
And the metric that Labour has said it is most focused on – the GDP per capita, or the economic output divided by the number of people in the country – also fell by 0.1%.
Pic: Reuters
Reacting to the figures, Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves said: “Am I satisfied with the numbers published today? Of course not. I want growth to be stronger, to come sooner, and also to be felt by families right across the country.”
“It’s why in my Mansion House speech last night, I announced some of the biggest reforms of our pension system in a generation to unlock long term patient capital, up to £80bn to help invest in small businesses and scale up businesses and in the infrastructure needs,” Ms Reeves later told Sky News in an interview.
“We’re four months into this government. There’s a lot more to do to turn around the growth performance of the last decade or so.”
New economy data tests chancellor’s growth plan
The sluggish services sector – which makes up the bulk of the British economy – was a particular drag on growth over the past three months. It expanded by 0.1%, cancelling out the 0.8% growth in the construction sector.
The UK’s GDP for the most recent quarter is lower than the 0.7% growth in the US and 0.4% in the Eurozone.
The figures have pushed the UK towards the bottom of the G7 growth table for the third quarter of the year.
It was expected to meet the same 0.2% growth figures reported in Germany and Japan – but fell below that after a slow September.
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The pound remained stable following the news, hovering around $1.267. The FTSE 100, meanwhile, opened the day down by 0.4%.
The Bank of England last week predicted that Ms Reeves’s first budget as chancellor will increase inflation by up to half a percentage point over the next two years, contributing to a slower decline in interest rates than previously thought.
Announcing a widely anticipated 0.25 percentage point cut in the base rate to 4.75%, the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) forecast that inflation will return “sustainably” to its target of 2% in the first half of 2027, a year later than at its last meeting.
The Bank’s quarterly report found Ms Reeves’s £70bn package of tax and borrowing measures will place upward pressure on prices, as well as delivering a three-quarter point increase to GDP next year.
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