Jacob Rees-Mogg has challenged human rights lawyer Shoaib Khan over the 31-month prison sentence given to Lucy Connolly for a tweet posted during the Southport riots.During the exchange, Rees-Mogg questioned whether Connolly's case represented "two-tier justice", comparing her 31-month sentence to other cases where offenders received lighter punishments.READ THE FULL STORY HERE
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00:00Thank you very much for joining me. Doesn't it smack of two-tier justice that 31 months for a tweet when people like Hugh Edwards, which is, you know, nasty pictures and so on, didn't even go to prison at all?
00:15I know. I mean, I don't actually. I mean, firstly, we've got the Court of Appeal judgment anyway, and I think it's slightly easier for me to argue this case now since we've actually got it there.
00:25If you had asked me that yesterday, it would have been a different thing. And obviously, the very senior, you know, a very senior court, the second highest court in the land.
00:32And it's a unanimous decision. But the point is, I mean, I think all this talk about two-tier justice.
00:38Now, I mean, first, just to start off with, I do think that in this country, we lock up far too many people for far too long.
00:44And that's usually counterproductive or definitely harmful. Not a good thing.
00:48I mean, from that starting point, if you, you know, if I had no idea about the laws of this country and what goes on, and you just told me, you know, a woman sent a tweet.
00:54This is what she said, you know, almost three years. I would say that is far too long.
00:59But that is the law of the land. And people have been sentenced, according to this, for years, for decades.
01:05That is the punishment that we give. And obviously, like I said, personally, I don't agree with that.
01:10But otherwise, yes, I mean, I think obviously the point even made now, I mean, it was a very specific, inciting tweet, you know, basically saying, let's go down.
01:18Let's go burn down these hotels. Now, whether or not, you know, anyone actually acting on it to me personally right now is irrelevant.
01:26I think, you know, in fact, if anyone had actually said, fine, Lucy, you know, here's a group of us.
01:33We're going and we'll go and burn down this hotel. I'm sure this sentence would have been much longer.
01:37But it's not quite what she said. She said and she used some impolite language, but she said she wouldn't mind if the hotels were burned.
01:46She didn't say that she wanted people to burn them. That seems to me to be a fundamental difference.
01:50She wasn't asking people to go and do it. She just said if it were done, she didn't care.
01:54I don't think, I mean, I know there has been lots of analysis of her language, but I don't think that's what she's saying.
02:01I mean, when basically you say, you know, her exact words, you know, for all I care, I think that's what she says.
02:09That's not really meaning, you know, I don't care.
02:12What it means is if that happens, as far as I'm concerned, that's a good thing.
02:15That's how I read it anyway. It's not saying, you know, because otherwise if it's something for all I care, I don't care about it.
02:21You wouldn't tweet about it. I mean, it's not like, you know.
02:23I don't mean you're doing anything about it, which is why I think it was just opinion.
02:27It was a nasty opinion. It was a bad opinion.
02:30But she's just saying these people are awful. I don't care if the hotels are going to get burnt down.
02:35That's a lack of sympathy. It's a lack of empathy.
02:38But she's not telling people, you know, go and get your Molotov cocktails and burn the hotels.
02:45No, but I mean, that's the thing. I mean, if she made it more specific, if, for instance, she had said, OK, there's an asylum seeker on my road.
02:51So for all I care, I wouldn't mind if someone buds his house down or to take a more, you know, serious.
02:56I mean, if someone says that about the prime minister or a named Tory or someone else, I mean, would we still have said, well, you know, it's just a view.
03:04No, it's not just a view. And obviously, like your previous guest was just saying, you know, we have to consider the situation at the time.
03:10But in fact, the situation made it worse, not better. It's not OK. That's the thing.
03:14You know, at that time of heightened tensions, we need to be even more restrained.
03:18We need to be even more careful about what we're saying, not more careless and say, well, it was a time of heightened tensions.
03:24So both sides could be even more inflammatory. And I think that's the point.
03:27And that's that's the point the judgment makes that of that whole year, that evening, those few hours were the time of the whole year.
03:35Those few hours were the most sensitive when everyone had to be careful about what was being said, the misinformation being spread.
03:41And you have to be careful not to further that misinformation.
03:45All right. Well, thank you very much, Shab and Jan.
03:48I'm with Nani, really, as she would say, if sticks and stones may break your bones, but words can never harm you.