The wife of an ex-Tory councillor who was jailed for calling for migrant hotels to be set on fire on the same day of the Southport attack is set to be released in the coming weeks.

Lucy Connolly, 41, was imprisoned for 31 months in October after being found guilty of inciting racial hatred.

Currently being housed at HMP Peterborough, she will have served 40 per cent of her term come August, according to The Sun.

The tweet, which called for "mass deportation now, set fire to all the f****** hotels full of the b******** for all I care", was viewed more than 300,000 times before she deleted it.

She concluded her tweet by saying, "if that makes me racist, so be it".

The post was prompted by false rumours that the suspect behind the murder of three girls at a dance class in Southport was an illegal migrant.

The Northampton woman, the wife of a former Tory councillor, lost an appeal to reduce the severity of her sentence in May.

Nigel Farage had previously called for her release and labelled her jail term "absolutely excessive".

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Lucy Connolly

"I want to make it absolutely clear: Lucy Connolly should not be in prison," the Reform UK leader said at an event in May.

"While she should not have said what she said, understand there were millions of mothers at that moment in time after Southport feeling exactly the same way."

It comes as Reform MP Richard Tice wrote in The Sun that he had recently visited Connolly in prison.

"What she told me was deeply sinister, and has left me genuinely concerned that someone, somewhere, is trying to keep her locked up for longer," Tice wrote.

"It has been almost a year since Lucy, in a moment of madness, posted on X urging her followers to “set fire” to migrant hotels."

He said the "whole point of justice is it has to have the confidence of the people it serves - to be decent, fair and equally applied".

Tice added that while "those who upset the 'Keir Brigade' are locked up in jail", there are "drug dealing migrants" that can't be deported for "ludicrous reasons".

"It is clear confidence is rapidly disappearing down the plug hole, replaced by a genuine fear that we have moved to a two-tier justice system," Tice wrote.

"And so it seems, too, with Lucy's experience in prison."

Tice detailed how she went from being regarded as a model prisoner and being told she would be taken to the "good girls wing" to being put in the "naught girls wing" reserved for the more violent inmates.

He wrote on allegations that Connolly was "jumped" in prison, handcuffed and thrown to the naught girls wing.

Meanwhile, Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said "people have received less time in jail - or not time - for actual physical and sexual assaults".

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has previously called the sentence "disproportionately severe" while Prime Minister Keir Starmer had defended it, saying he would "always support" the UK court system.