OK, they're Hezbollah suspects. But at least they didn't post something nasty on X

Welcome to Britain 2025, where the priorities are upside down

Last year, police made 30 arrests a day for offensive social media posts

What do a couple of suspected Hezbollah terrorists and a childminder who posted something unpleasant on X have in common? Precisely nothing, as it turns out. For while the apparent jihadis were granted bail this week, the childminder was denied it, quickly found guilty and banged up for 31 months.

It is a tale of two Britains. In the first case, detectives arrested a 39-year-old man on suspicion of being a member of Hezbollah, preparing acts of terrorism and being involved funding planned attacks. Officers also arrested a 35-year-old man on similar grounds. They were taken to a London police station and have been released on bail until July. Clearly not a danger to the public, I suppose.

After Allison Pearson’s searing interview with her husband, the case of Lucy Connolly, who turned 42 in prison in January, is better known. She was one of more than 1,500 people arrested after the social unrest following the July 29 Southport massacre of three girls at a Taylor Swift dance class (when the authorities made matters worse by covering up the identity and motives of the attacker).

Connolly was not involved in the rioting, of course, but for a post on X, for which she was arrested with eight days, charged under Section 19 of the Public Order Act 1986 with publishing material intending to stir up racial hatred, denied bail — clearly a danger to the public, I suppose — and imprisoned for more than two-and-a-half years.

My argument makes itself. Britain. What the hell. In fact, to these two cases we may add a third that bears many more similarities to Connolly’s case: that of the east London imam who took to the pulpit in those febrile weeks after October 7 and implored Allah to bring destruction upon the homes of the Jews.

But first, let’s consider in more detail the supposed crime committed by the childminder, who had been especially sensitised to the deaths of children after losing her firstborn son, Harry, in 2011, who had died at the age of 19 months as a result of failures in NHS care (perhaps this is also part of the sorry tale of modern Britain).

Connolly — a carer for her unwell husband, a former Conservative councillor — made the post at around 8.30pm, took the dog for a walk, came home and deleted it. Yet it is for this lapse of judgment that she is now serving a sentence longer than that given to most criminals guilty of far worse offences.

“Mass deportation now, set fire to all the f***ing hotels full of the b*****ds for all I care,” she wrote. “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.”

Hardly wholesome stuff. But it could be easily argued that this was not direct incitement for violence. The important part is “for all I care”. She was expressing an overwhelming distress and anger, saying that she would not “care” if migrants were deported and burned in hotels, and she was fed up of being told that her concerns about migration were “racist”. She was not saying “I call on local people to grab cans of petrol and burn people alive right now”.

By comparison, consider our old friend the east London Imam. “Oh Allah, curse the Jews and the children of Israel,” he prayed before his congregation. “Oh Allah, break their words, shake their feet, disperse and tear apart their unity and ruin their houses and destroy their homes.” This in a part of London with a Jewish community nearby.

A video of the sermon that was proudly posted online caused outrage among Jews and eventually made its way to the police. They failed to pursue the matter until it was picked up by the Jewish Chronicle, after which they promised to reassess the evidence. Last month, however, a spokesman confirmed that although “many people found the content upsetting,” the sermon “does not meet the threshold of a crime”.

The double standards are breathtaking. It is true that the Imam did not directly demand that his fellow worshippers get out the axes and take to the Jews themselves. But how could a rant calling for the destruction of Jewish homes be treated so differently from Connolly’s ill-advised post on X? And how can two Hezbollah suspects be granted bail when it was denied for a social media offence?

Today, the Times reported that the police are making more than 30 arrests a day — a day — over offensive posts on social media. What has become of our country? Millions of ordinary people can only watch open-mouthed as the priorities of their rulers become motivated by ideology above the wellbeing of citizens.

As I will argue in my forthcoming book, Never Again? How the West betrayed the Jews and itself, we have arrived at the end point of a mania in which other cultures are venerated and our own are debased. This lies behind so much of the malaise in which we find ourselves. If it goes on much longer, I fear there will be no way back.