Jacob Rees-Mogg has challenged human rights lawyer Shoaib Khan over the 31-month prison sentence given to Lucy Connolly for a tweet posted during the Southport riots.
During the exchange, Rees-Mogg questioned whether Connolly's case represented "two-tier justice", comparing her 31-month sentence to other cases where offenders received lighter punishments.
Connolly, the wife of a former Conservative councillor, was jailed after pleading guilty to inciting racial hatred following a post on X that mentioned setting fire to hotels housing migrants.
Connolly's controversial tweet, posted hours after Axel Rudakubana killed three young girls at a Taylor Swift-themed holiday club in Southport, read: "Mass deportation now, set fire to all the f---ing hotels full of the b------s for all I care, while you're at it, take the treacherous government politicians with them."
Shoaib Khan defended the prison sentence
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Though she deleted the post less than four hours later, it had already been viewed 310,000 times. Connolly was arrested on August 6 following widespread riots across the country.
Jacob Rees-Mogg asked the human rights lawyer: "Doesn't it smack of two-tier justice 31 months for a tweet when people like Huw Edwards, with nasty pictures and so on, didn’t even go to prison at all?"
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He added: "She used some impolite language but she said she wouldn't mind if the hotels were burned. She didn’t say that she wanted people to burn them.
"That seems to me to be a fundamental difference. She wasn’t asking people to go and do it she just said if it were done, she didn’t care."
Khan responded: "I know there has been lots of analysis over language, but I don't think that's what she's saying. I mean, when you say her exact words 'for all I care,' I think that's what she said.
"That’s not really meaning, I don’t care. What it means is if that happens, as far as I’m concerned, that’s a good thing. That’s how I read it anyway. Otherwise, if it was something you truly didn’t care about, you wouldn’t tweet about it.
Rees-Mogg responded: "Which is why I think it was just opinion. It was a nasty opinion, a bad opinion, but she was just saying, These people are awful, I don’t care if the hotels get burned down.
"That’s a lack of sympathy, a lack of empathy, but she’s not telling people, 'Go and get your Molotov cocktails and burn the hotels'."
Connolly's personal circumstances have featured prominently in her case. She cares for her sick husband, who is suffering from a bone marrow complaint, and has a 12-year-old daughter.
Jacob Rees-Mogg grilled the human rights lawyer
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The court heard that Connolly lost her son, Harry, in tragic circumstances around 14 years ago, and that news of the Southport murders had heightened her sensitivity.
Despite being eligible for temporary release since November, she has not been allowed to visit her family.
Several prominent Conservative politicians have called for her release, including party leader Kemi Badenoch, former prime minister Liz Truss, and former home secretary Suella Braverman, who described Connolly as "a victim of a politicised two-tier justice system".
