Nigel Farage will give evidence to members of Congress about threats to freedom of expression in the UK when he travels to the US next month.
Nigel Farage will tell Lucy Connolly’s story when he goes to a Washington hearing (Image: Getty / X)
Nigel Farage will tell Lucy Connolly’s story when he gives evidence in a free speech hearing with key Donald Trump allies in September. The Reform UK leader is set to testify to members of Congress in Washington who believe freedom of expression needs to be monitored in the UK.
Ms Connolly, who was released from prison on Thursday, had been sentenced to 31 months in prison for inciting racial hatred, after she called for people to set fire to hotels housing asylum seekers in a social media post. Mr Farage said her case would be “a very central point of what I’m discussing”. He has publicly criticised her imprisonment, despite the European Convention on Human Rights stating that inciting racial hatred is not covered by freedom of expression.
Ms Connolly was found guilty of inciting racial hatred after she called for mass deportations on X, and said to “set fire to all the f****** hotels full of the b******* for all I care, while you’re at it, take the treacherous government politicians with them”.
The 42-year-old wife of a Tory councillor was sentenced at Birmingham Crown Court last October to 31 months’ imprisonment, of which she served 40%.
Nigel Farage will share her story with the House Judiciary Committee at the Capitol on September 3, according to The Telegraph, at a time when the Trump administration has voiced concerns over free speech in Britain, which it is monitoring “with great concern”.
The committee is chaired by Jim Jordan, a Republican congressman, and numerous high-ranking Trump allies.
A report from the US State Department raised concerns about what it called “serious restrictions” on freedom of expression in the UK. It pointed to what it claimed were interventions by government officials “to chill speech” after the Southport attack and subsequent riots.
Upon her release on Thursday, Mr Farage said her treatment meant she was “now a symbol of Keir Starmer’s authoritarian, broken, two-tier Britain”.
In her first newspaper interview since her release, Connolly told the Telegraph she considered herself and “several other people” to be political prisoners of the Prime Minister.
She said: “He’s a human rights lawyer, so maybe he needs to look at what people’s human rights are, what freedom of speech means and what the laws are in this country.”
Under Crown Prosecution Service guidance, inciting racial hatred is a criminal offence in England and is not covered by freedom of expression through .
