Wife of Tory councillor bailed over race-hate post

Lucy Connolly has apologised for the social media post and said she acted on false information

Warning: This story includes offensive language.

The wife of a Tory councillor has been bailed pending inquiries after calling for hotels housing asylum seekers to be set on fire.

Lucy Connolly, 41, who works as a childminder in Northampton, was arrested on Tuesday night and questioned on suspicion of inciting racial hatred.

It follows the publication of a now-deleted post on her X account, stating: "Mass deportation now, set fire to all the fucking hotels full of the bastards for all I care... If that makes me racist, so be it.”

Raymond Connolly is a Conservative councillor for Delapre and Rushmere

Mrs Connolly published the post hours after the murders of three schoolgirls in Southport, Merseyside, on 29 July.

The killings prompted a slew of online misinformation, including widely shared claims that the suspect was a "Muslim migrant".

In a subsequent post, Mrs Connolly apologised, and said she had acted on “false and malicious” information.

Speaking to the BBC on Tuesday, Raymond Connolly, vice chair of West Northamptonshire Council's adult social care committee, said his wife was a good person and not a racist.

"The day those children were murdered, she was crying when I got home from work - she made one stupid, spur of the moment Tweet out of frustration and quickly deleted it but it was screen-shotted.

"She’s got Somalian and Bangladeshi kids she looks after and she loves them like they’re her own,” he said.

Mrs Connolly appears to have deleted her X account.

In her post on Tuesday night, she wrote: "I regret and apologise for a recent post that I made.

"Acting on information that I now know to be false and malicious, and in a moment of extreme outrage and emotion, I posted words that I realise were wrong in every way.

"I am someone who cares enormously about children, and the similarity between those beautiful children who were so brutally attacked and my own daughter overwhelmed me with horror but I should not have expressed that horror in the way that I did."

The website, childcare.co.uk, said it had suspended an Ofsted-registered childminder from advertising on its platform following information received about a highly inappropriate tweet.