A woman who was jailed for stirring up racial hatred in the aftermath of the Southport attack has been released from prison.

Lucy Connolly, 42, whose husband serves on Northampton Town Council, pleaded guilty in September after posting the expletive-ridden message on X the day three girls were stabbed to death in July 2024.

Connolly, from Northampton, called for “mass deportation now” and urged her followers on X to “set fire” to hotels housing asylum seekers.

She was released from HMP Peterborough earlier after she was handed a 31-month prison sentence in October at Birmingham Crown Court.

Connolly’s case has sparked debate, with some criticising her sentence as excessive.

Speaking after her release, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch compared Connolly’s treatment to that of those who took part in riots following the Southport attack.

“Her punishment was harsher than the sentences handed down for bricks thrown at police or actual rioting,” Badenoch said on X.

“Protecting people from words should not be given greater weight in law than public safety. If the law does this, then the law itself is broken and it’s time Parliament looked again at the Public Order Act.”

• How one woman’s racist tweet sparked a free speech row

Lord Young of Acton, founder and director of the Free Speech Union, said it was a “national scandal” that Connolly had spent more than a year in prison “for a single tweet that she quickly deleted and apologised for”.

During Connolly’s appeal against her sentence in May, the Court of Appeal heard news of the Southport murders had caused a resurgence of the anxiety caused by her son’s death at the age of 19 months, 14 years earlier.

Connolly’s husband, Raymond, a Northampton town councillor and former West Northamptonshire councillor, had defended his wife, saying she was “a good person and not a racist” and that she had “paid a very high price for making a mistake”.

Over the past few weeks, he has told the BBC: “Lucy has already had the worst thing happen to her, losing her son tragically.”

He said she missed the children she looked after as a childminder and that some had visited her in prison.

“Two boys came and said ‘We are here to see our English mum’ so those visits have been good for Lucy,” he said.

“Lucy is of incredibly strong character and that has helped. She will be looking after our daughter now, and she’ll try to find a job, I guess – that will be her starting point.

“I’ve had letters of support from Canada to Australia so that has kept me going.”

In his sentencing remarks in October, Judge Melbourne Inman said Connolly’s offence was “category A” – meaning “high culpability” – and that both the prosecution and her own barrister agreed she “intended to incite serious violence”.

Sentencing guidelines for the offence indicate a starting point of three years’ custody.

Sir Keir Starmer supported the sentencing during Prime Minister’s Questions on 21 May, when he was asked whether Connolly’s imprisonment was an “efficient or fair use” of prison.

He responded: “Sentencing is a matter for our courts, and I celebrate the fact that we have independent courts in this country.

“I am strongly in favour of free speech, we’ve had free speech in this country for a very long time and we protect it fiercely.

“But I am equally against incitement to violence against other people. I will always support the action taken by our police and courts to keep our streets and people safe.”

In May Court of Appeal judges refused her appeal to reduce the sentence.

The former childminder posted her tweet on X on 29 July 2024.

On 6 August 2024 she was arrested, by which point she had deleted her social media account, but other messages were found by officers after they had seized her phone.

The post was viewed 310,000 times in the three-and-a-half hours before she deleted it.

Later in court she admitted to inciting racial hatred by publishing and distributing “threatening or abusive” written material on X.

It is understood Connolly was a passenger in a white taxi which left HMP Peterborough via the vehicle airlock, a set of two gates exiting the prison, shortly after 10:00 BST.

Once the external gate of the airlock had opened, it was reported the taxi drove off down the road past reporters.