GMB's Susanna Reid clashes with Nadine Dorries as furious Lucy Connolly row erupts

Susanna Reid became involved in a heated exchange with Nadine Dorries during Wednesday's Good Morning Britain over the contentious topic of Lucy Connolly. The presenter, 54, was back in her regular presenting role on the ITV breakfast programme alongside Ed Balls when they welcomed Nadine, 68, to discuss her transition to the Reform party.

Susanna immediately raised the subject of Lucy, a woman who received a prison sentence after being convicted of inciting racial hatred through a tweet she published on the day of the Southport attacks in July 2023. Lucy has subsequently been freed from custody and made an appearance at the Reform party conference. When questioned about this matter, Nadine responded: "I don't call her a convicted criminal! It's a new party, well Reform is the same thing Nigel has been saying for 30 years, banging the same drum, didn't decide on a policy because it wanted to win votes and I felt a relief to be in a party with other people who share those views," reports the Mirror.

Susanna fired back: "But you were in the Online Safety Bill! It didn't give you any sort of shiver that someone was at your conference who was convicted of inciting hatred online?".

The pair started speaking simultaneously and Nadine retorted: "Absolutely not! In the case of Lucy Connolly, if you want to talk about that we can, but I think we'll use up all our time."

Susanna then cut across her again, declaring: "No, specifically Lucy Connolly..." However, Nadine stood her ground, even when Ed Balls joined the discussion.

She stated: "I felt what we saw with Lucy Connolly was a severe reaction to a woman who took down a tweet, and we've all posted, Ed, tweets, that we shouldn't have done. It was in the aftermath of an attack where young girls had been murdered."

Ed persisted on the topic, to which Nadine responded: "I'm not sure what the purpose of this is?" She then elaborated: "I don't brush off people who have been incited in courts of law. But I think there was a whole issue at the time, this was a long time ago now, of two-tier policing.

"Lucy Connolly was made an example of, I think the time she spent in prison was extraordinarily long for what she'd done, the tweet she'd deleted. I think it's unfair she was singled out in that way. There was plenty of stuff on social media in that day."

Lucy served 10 months of her 31 month sentence after posting "set fire to all the f*****g hotels full of the b***** for all I care" on social media. Susanna asked Nadine if she was 'happy' to share the stage with a convicted criminal.

Nadine concluded: "If we're going to put someone in prison for putting a tweet out, what I want to see is equality and fairness and meritocracy. What I don't want to see are individuals targeted, teams of thought police knocking on doors.

"I don't wanna see young mothers as the person who is chosen. I'd like everybody who incited racial hatred on that day to be behind bars, but that isn't the case. One woman was."