JOHN BULL
It’s grotesque. It’s gut-wrenching. It’s un-British. Lucy Connolly was not arrested because she posed a threat to the state – she was arrested because Keir Starmer and the state felt threatened, says John Bull.
Blast the bugles and ready the Battenberg – for if ever a tale were to stir both the libertarian spleen and the British sense of fair play, it is this one.
A childminder, a grieving mother, and a political prisoner in all but name: Lucy Connolly, banged up for a tweet.
Yes, you read that correctly. Not a pipe bomb. Not a machete. Not laundering Russian roubles in a Soho sauna. A tweet. Fifty-one words on a website designed to amplify noise – and for that, 31 months behind bars.
If you’re not yet fizzing with fury, check your pulse. You may be asleep or, worse, working at the Ministry of Justice.
A Digital Gallows
Let us be perfectly clear: Lucy Connolly’s tweet was not nice. It was crass. It was offensive in ways that, even for the most battle-hardened eye-roller of the internet age, cause a wince. But was it criminal to the tune of years behind bars? Was it violent? Did she incite a mob? Was there a pitchfork in her boot or petrol in her handbag?
No. What she did was tweet something abhorrent, then delete it within four hours. She didn’t march. She didn’t riot. She walked her dog.
And yet, there she sits – not merely incarcerated, but, according to prison insiders, denied the standard privileges afforded to inmates who have actually killed people. Why? Because the public might talk. Because the media might gawk. Because someone, somewhere, decided she must be made an example.
And what an example she has become. A woman known to immigrant families as “the kindest British person I’ve met” now rots in a cell, not for fire or fist, but for a tweet – the digital equivalent of shouting something horrible into a storm and immediately regretting it.
Had she penned this sentence in Rwanda or North Korea, Amnesty International would have shipped in cages and candles. But because it happened here, in this soggy Labour run kingdom of late-stage wokeness, we’re supposed to smile politely while the state mops the blood from its image by trampling over a grieving mother’s free expression?
Have we lost all sense of proportionality? Is this justice, or is this reputation management with a badge?
Starmer’s Symbolic Sacrifices
This, let’s be honest, reeks of politics. Lucy Connolly was not arrested because she posed a threat to the state – she was arrested because the state felt threatened. Southport was chaos. Starmer was booed. The media was ravenous. And from the smouldering mess emerged Lucy: a white, middle-class woman with a Conservative Councillor husband and a badly-worded tweet. A gift-wrapped scapegoat for a panicked government needing to show “action”.
You can practically hear the decision-making in Downing Street: We must do something. Let’s start with her.
Never mind that her fellow prisoners – convicted killers – are being released on tags. Never mind that she was the only one arrested for words rather than actions. Never mind that her daughter’s mental health is deteriorating, her husband is gravely ill, and she’s eligible –eligible! – for temporary release.
What matters, apparently, is optics.
The Fridge Magnet Justice System
We are told justice must be blind. Increasingly, it seems it must also be deaf, dumb, and obsessed with hashtags.
When a woman is denied a day at home with her sick husband because someone at the MoJ thinks a Daily Mail headline might look awkward, we are no longer talking about law – we are talking about brand protection. Her application for release on temporary licence wasn’t blocked because she posed a risk. It was blocked because she posed a headline.
Meanwhile, convicted criminals – men with fists, blades and blood on their hands – are walking out with ankle tags because the prisons are full. Full! What are we doing? Rehabilitating? Or rebranding?
This isn’t justice – it’s legacy software malfunctioning under moral lag. In any decentralised free society worth its silicon, one vile tweet shouldn’t trigger incarceration. It should trigger debate. Exposure. Pushback. Not censorship with handcuffs.
If she’d been ordered to complete, say, 31 hours of an internet usage awareness course, even that would have struck me as excessive — a heavy-handed intrusion on free speech. But instead, she got 31 months behind bars, and the punishment hasn’t stopped there. They’re still using her as a cautionary tale, not because she poses a threat, but because they fear the optics.
This is what happens when institutions confuse public morality with trending topics. The algorithm is now in charge of the cell keys.
Liberty and Lunacy
Now, let’s be grown-ups. Was Lucy Connolly’s post grotesque? Yes. Was it born of trauma? Almost certainly. She lost her son to NHS failure. She works with children. And on the day of the Southport massacre – a grotesque act of real violence – she cracked. She vented. She said something that appalled millions. But she did not throw a brick. She did not organise a mob. She deleted her post, apologised, and went back to her toddlers and teacups.
That is not a monster. That is a human being in pain. And we, a supposedly liberal nation, decided to throw her in prison to protect ourselves from embarrassment.
It’s grotesque. It’s gut-wrenching. It’s un-British.
Final Thought: The Clock is Ticking
On May 15th, Lucy Connolly’s appeal will be heard. If the Court of Appeal has any sense of proportion – or spine – it will see through the pantomime and let this woman go home. Not because she’s perfect. Not because what she said was fine. But because justice must mean more than appeasing the Twitterati or sheltering fragile politicians from public anger.
Lucy Connolly is not a threat to society. The threat lies in a justice system that imprisons people not for what they do, but for what they represent.
It’s not just about Lucy anymore.
It’s about all of us.
By John Bull.
If Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher were to forge a pen-wielding crusader for the 21st century, the result would be none other than John Bull. The nation’s most patriotic voice, John Bull stands as a beacon of British grit and tenacity, blending Churchillian wit with the Iron Lady’s resolve. Armed with unyielding conviction and a sharp eye for the political landscape, he delivers the latest insights and observations from Westminster and beyond for the Conservative Post. Whether rallying against bureaucratic bungling or championing the timeless values of Britain’s great heritage, John Bull is the columnist who reminds us what it means to be unapologetically British.
RELATED MUST READ ARTICLE BY ALLISON PEARSON “I heard the full story of the woman jailed for two years for a tweet. Her injustice shames Britain”: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/04/04/lucy-connolly-southport-riots-axel-rudakubana-taylor-swift/
This article (Lucy Connolly Wasn’t a Threat to the State — She Was Arrested Because Starmer and the State Felt Threatened) was created and published by Conservative Post and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author John Bull
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