Malcolm Offord took to X to defend candidate Allan Lyons after he downplayed comments by criminal Lucy Connolly.
Reform UK Scotland leader Malcolm Offord (right) speaks at Tollcross International Swimming Centre, Glasgow during campaigning for the Scottish Parliament elections.
Reform Scotland’s leader has lined up behind a candidate who defended a woman jailed for calling for asylum hotels to be set on fire.
Malcolm Offord described Holyrood hopeful Allan Lyons as “brilliant” amid a row over comments about criminal Lucy Connolly.
Connolly, from Northampton, admitted to inciting racial hatred after the 2024 Southport stabbings, where three young girls were murdered.
She wrote on X at the time: “Mass deportation now, set fire to all the f****** hotels full of the b******s for all I care, while you’re at it take the treacherous government and politicians with them.
“I feel physically sick knowing what these families will now have to endure. If that makes me racist so be it.”
The post was viewed 310,000 times before it was deleted and she was jailed for 31 months.
Despite Connolly’s guilty plea, her case sparked a free speech row, with right wingers believing she was treated harshly.
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Lyons, who is standing for Reform in the Rutherglen and Cambuslang seat for Holyrood, downplayed Connolly’s remarks in a post last year:
“While the tweet may have been offensive, anything anyone could say at any point could potentially offend someone.
“I do not agree that speech should be limited by the potential to cause offense, Lucy’s tweet was not a call to action and should not have been criminalised.”
Offord, whose election campaign has been dogged by rows over controversial candidates, weighed in behind Lyons.
He wrote on X: “What our brilliant candidate Allan Lyons actually said was that we should not be locking up people like Lucy Connolly over a tweet. The police should be allowed to focus on catching real criminals!”
According to a court judgement, Connolly later sent a WhatsApp message saying if she got arrested she would “play the mental health card”.
Thomas Kerr, Reform’s lead candidate on the Glasgow List, also said he agreed with Lyons.
He said: “She [Connolly] said something that was regrettable. She deleted the tweet, but the idea that you lock somebody up because of a thought that they had, I think, is ludicrous. So she was at our conference last year. Alan’s entitled to his view. She herself admitted that she was wrong on that and deleted it straight away.
Asked if he believed the tweet amounted to inciting racial hatred, he said: “It’s not. As I said, she recognised that there was an issue, she deleted the tweet straight away, and then she ended up in court and in jail. I don’t think that’s right.”
Monica Lennon, the Labour candidate in the constituency, said of Lyons: “It is chilling to see a Reform UK candidate in Scotland downplay the actions of a criminal who called for hotels to be set on fire. Calling for arson isn’t ‘free speech’ – it’s incitement.
“Allan Lyons is not fit to represent the people of Rutherglen, Cambuslang and Blantyre and he shouldn’t be anywhere near the corridors of power.
“The last thing Scotland needs are politicians who are soft on the incitement of racial hatred. We need leaders who want to keep our streets safe, not those making excuses for people who want to see them burn.”
