Only a very clever man like Lord Sumption could be so stupid when it comes to Lucy Connolly
Some ideas are so stupid only intellectuals believe them. Substitute 'judges' for 'intellectuals' and George Orwell's marvellous aphorism applies perfectly to an article by Jonathan Sumption first published on The Telegraph website on Monday.
I wasn't going to write about Lucy Connolly this week, but so incensed was I by Lord Sumption's awful opinions that I cannot stay silent. It was good to see that a huge number of readers – more than 9,000 comments at the time of writing (a record, I think) – had the same furious reaction to Sumption's unforgivably callous, 'I shall not waste any sympathy on Mrs Connolly'.
Why does Lord Sumption think sympathy for Lucy is wasted? She is mother to a 12-year-old girl who has been without her mummy for 10 months and may yet sustain long-term psychological harm. A woman of previous good character who lost a child in horrifying circumstances and lashed out in rage and sorrow last summer when six parents suffered the anguish of their little girls being slaughtered in a massacre that bore the bloody hallmark of an imported crime. A 42-year-old childminder, tender carer to the infants of immigrants, who shares the majority British view that hordes of undocumented males from backward cultures, put up at vast expense in 'asylum' hotels, pose a threat to our society in general, and our children in particular. Lucy acted in haste, posted something she called 'disgusting' and repented quickly. A model prisoner, she could have been released on tag last November but instead has been kept inside while fellow inmates, who are openly planning the robberies they will commit to fund their drug addiction, are let out.
Any decent judge or magistrate would be looking for a reason to avoid giving such a person a custodial term when community service would suffice. Sarah Pochin, Reform UK's first woman MP and a magistrate for 20 years, yesterday described Lucy's sentence as 'draconian', saying she should never have gone to prison in the first place and it would not happen under a Farage government. Yet Mrs Connolly, who was given a notably harsh jail term for a post on social media when thousands of violent men and paedophiles get off with a lower, even a suspended, sentence (more of this warped judicial behaviour anon) is apparently unworthy of compassion or mercy from his lordship. Really?
I have been a fan of Lord Sumption. The former Justice of the Supreme Court is undoubtedly one of the most brilliant legal minds of his generation. During Covid, those of us who thought lockdown was an appalling mistake were grateful and reassured to have this pillar of the establishment on our side. He warned that British society was becoming 'totalitarian' and the government was deliberately stoking up fear and 'acting with a cavalier disregard for the limits of their legal powers'. 'The British public has not even begun to understand the seriousness of what is happening to our country,' Sumption said, and his words carried huge weight.
Why that same, deeply clever man cannot see how Lucy Connolly's case represents exactly the kind of authoritarian overreach we saw during lockdown (with fear as its instrument) is a puzzle. Or maybe not if the idea is to buttress Sumption's colleagues in the Court of Appeal, who have attracted considerable criticism since Lord Justice Holroyde declared last week that there was 'no arguable basis' that Lucy Connolly's (manifestly excessive) original sentence was 'manifestly excessive'.
Lord Sumption concedes: 'English law has generally been on the side of freedom of expression… it has always drawn the line at threatening language which is likely to provoke a breach of the peace… If a rabble-rouser stood on a soap-box in front of a howling mob and urged them to head for the nearest immigration hostel and burn it down, this point would be obvious. Doing it on social media is worse because the reach of social media posts is much greater. Its algorithms thrust words like Mrs Connolly's under the noses of people who are already likely to agree. The internet can whip up a howling mob in minutes.'
But there is zero evidence that Lucy's words, posted on the evening of the Southport murders, incited violence. Riots did not break out 'in minutes'. They started days later following Sir Keir Starmer's infamous and insulting 19-second laying of a wreath in Southport before a jeering crowd. And after the authorities had done their sly best to conceal from a distraught public key information about the killer, Axel Rudakubana – compare the alacrity (and sigh of relief) with which they announced that the alleged Liverpool car attacker was a white, middle-aged male. Funny what can be disclosed when an alleged offender doesn't belong to a protected minority, eh?
No normal person agrees with Lord Sumption that fleeting tweets are worse than, to take just one example, what suspended Labour councillor Ricky Jones is alleged to have done in person at the time Lucy was arrested. Jones was filmed at an anti-fascism demonstration apparently urging a crowd to attack rioters: 'They are disgusting Nazi fascists and we need to cut all their throats and get rid of them all.'
For reasons which I'd quite like the Ministry of Justice to explain, Jones was granted bail while Lucy Connolly had her bail application rejected twice. Jones has been a free man since January (no pressure to plead guilty for him, no kangaroo hearing within days) and his much-postponed trial will finally take place in August (unless the judge has a pressing lunch engagement or pigs are seen flying over the Old Bailey). By which time, Lucy will have served a whole year behind bars.
It is this apparent two-tier justice which Lord Sumption did not address in a piece where he loftily dismissed the claim that Lucy is a free-speech martyr or 'even a political prisoner'. I am no student of jurisprudence (a lucky escape as I got into Cambridge to read law) but to me, and to millions of others, it is perfectly obvious that a political prisoner is exactly what Lucy Connolly is.
Prison authorities at Drake Hall in Staffordshire have just punished their exemplary prisoner for 'press engagement' – that's communicating her predicament via her husband, Ray, to yours truly. 'Auntie Judith', AKA your columnist, has sadly been struck off the list of people Lucy is allowed to phone.
She has also repeatedly been denied release on temporary licence (ROTL) with her child and sick husband. 'You've offended a lot of people, Lucy,' one official chided. Probation officers and prison guards alike have expressed astonishment that Lucy is still not free. After the Court of Appeal's heartbreaking decision last Tuesday, her cell was full of officers coming to commiserate: they all assumed she was going home, and other prisoners had already distributed Lucy's stuff among themselves.
After months of unfair treatment, when Lucy dared to complain to someone outside the prison that she wasn't being allowed the leave on licence to which she was entitled, the prison authorities said she would, yet again, not be allowed that leave, because of, yes, complaining to someone outside the prison. What does that sound like to you? Joseph Heller called it Catch-22.
I am told that prison authorities have been 'rattled' by The Telegraph's coverage of Lucy's case. Good. So they bloody well should be. The free press – are we still allowed one of those, Prime Minister? – will not stay silent when we perceive a carriage of misjustice.
I could easily fill this column with examples of heinous cases where an offender was afforded more lenient treatment than Lucy Connolly. One that leaps out concerns the Court of Appeal, which just dashed Lucy's hopes. In March 2023, the court cut the jail term given to former Labour peer Lord Ahmed of Rotherham for sexually abusing two children in the 1970s. Ahmed was convicted of trying to rape an underage girl on two occasions and seriously sexually assaulting a boy under the age of 11. He was jailed for five years and six months at Sheffield Crown Court in February 2022. The judge told Lord Ahmed: 'Your actions have had profound and lifelong effects on the girl and the boy, who have lived with what you did to them for between 46 and 53 years. They express more eloquently than I ever could how your actions have affected and continue to affect their lives in so many different and damaging ways.'
However, in their infinite wisdom, three Appeal Court judges, including Lord Justice Holroyde who decided that Lucy Connolly's 31-month sentence was 'not manifestly excessive', reduced the jail term of the sexual abuser and Labour Muslim peer to two years and six months because his age at the time of the offences was not given sufficient weight.
Let us pause for a moment, lords, ladies and gentlemen, and marvel at the very clever stupid men who think that a mother who put something hateful for four hours on social media deserves a longer prison sentence than a man who tried to rape and molest children, and got away with that dreadful crime for half a century.
'I shall not waste any sympathy on Mrs Connolly,' quoth the finest legal mind of his generation. 'What she did was a serious offence.' She didn't try to rape a child though, did she, Lord Sumption? She didn't sexually assault a little boy and claim that two traumatised children told malicious falsehoods about her. She didn't use power and influence to put herself above the law. She didn't get her outrageous sentence reduced by privileged men who seem to have a problem relating to white women from ordinary families with sensible views about immigration.
Honestly, the way the judiciary extends leniency to sex offenders is repellent to the point of warped. At least 177 paedophiles have walked free since Lucy Connolly was sentenced on October 17 2024. A devoted mum jailed for two years and seven months while depraved men in possession of the worst category of images of children being violated don't lose a single day of their liberty. (Huw Edwards being just one notorious example: a six-month suspended sentence for the BBC boy-groomer!)
By now, it should be amply clear to the British people that our justice system is broken and politicised. Here is a retired judge who emailed the Planet Normal podcast: 'For 40 years, I felt proud and privileged to be a member of what I perceived as a noble and learned profession. Alas! No longer it seems. The way the judiciary has treated poor Lucy Connolly and her family is nothing short of an outrage and scandal that should offend all decent people, while those who bring terror and mayhem to the shores of this nation are admonished (if they are even caught) with little more than a slap on the wrist. I am actually surprised that a senior member of the judiciary has not resigned in the most public of ways to distance himself from the heartlessness of his brothers. Lucy Connolly's treatment has a political motive behind it. Of that there can be no doubt, despite the Separation of Powers being one of the cornerstones of our unwritten constitution. Keep up the good fight, Allison, for all our sakes.'
And here is a Telegraph reader who styles himself DC Anonymous: 'I'm a serving police officer of 25 years. I've been a detective on specialist crime units, so I know my way around the justice system. The grossly disproportionate sentence and treatment of Lucy is an embarrassment to the justice system. Her tweet was vile and nasty. However, a community sentence would have been more appropriate. My colleagues and I often work long hours to get convictions over the line and often see paltry sentences dished out to some of the most dangerous offenders with all mitigations taken into consideration. Only for a lady who poses no threat to society to be given two years, seven months. It sickens me to my stomach. Most of us joined the job to arrest real criminals, not see innocent members of the public criminalised for hurty words. My colleagues and I are sick to death of woke management, judges and politicians making our difficult jobs even tougher. No wonder the public has lost respect for us.'
I am close to tears when I read emails like those, and as I watch Lucy's crowdfunder appeal edge towards £150,000. Thank God there are still good people who are appalled that 'hurty words' – Orwellian thought crimes no less – receive swingeing sentences while villains go free.
It's not hard to foresee that this institutional madness could end up in the serious civil unrest that making a scapegoat of Lucy was meant to forestall. On Tuesday, Tommy Robinson, the far-Right activist, was released from prison after his 18-month sentence was reduced by four months at the High Court last week. Looking like an Old Testament prophet, eyes blazing with religious fervour, a heavily-bearded Robinson (who endured weeks of solitary confinement) said that a war was being waged 'against free speech in Britain'. Citing Lucy Connolly, Robinson said she was 'not a violent criminal' and demanded to know why she had been jailed for so long.
While Sir Keir claimed not to have heard of Lucy (does the dreadful man expect us to believe a word he says?), Boris Johnson said that 'Starmer's Britain is losing its reputation for free speech and turning into a police state'. Too right.
On Tuesday, Nigel Farage became the latest heavyweight to champion Starmer's political prisoner, saying: 'I want to make it absolutely clear that Lucy Connolly should not be in prison… Although she should not have said what she said, there were millions of mothers at that moment in time after the Southport [massacre] feeling exactly the same way.' Beautifully put.
Compare and contrast with Lord Sumption's cold, contemptible, 'Lucy Connolly is in prison where she belongs'. This is what happens when judges have minds so brilliant they cannot be polluted with common sense – or mercy.
I just spoke to Ray Connolly, who is at home in Northampton. Ray said that he had read The Telegraph article and Sumption seemed to be a 'stupid git' (possibly the first time the law lord has been described in that way!) and that Sir Keir must be 'regretting the day he tried to make an example of Lucy Connolly'.
So, where do we go from here? Drake Hall prison authorities told Lucy that a previous ROTL had been denied because she had expressed 'extreme views' in her phone conversations (possibly with 'Auntie Judith'). But that had now been downgraded to 'strong opinions'.
'Are they saying that Lucy's ROTL is now good to go?' asks Ray, who is desperate for his wife to be able to come home and hug and reassure their daughter even for one day and a night. What further ridiculous excuses and delaying tactics can the justice system come up with for denying Mrs Connolly the temporary leave to which she is entitled?
'The British public has not even begun to understand the seriousness of what is happening to our country,' Lord Sumption said when free speech was brutally suppressed during Covid lockdown.
Well, dear Lord Sumption, I think they're starting to understand it all too well, thanks to Lucy Connolly.
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