Was a man in England sentenced to 7½ years in jail just because of his social media posts? No, that's not true: He was sentenced based on charges involving violence, according to the police organization handling his arrest. The man, a taxi driver, also used social media to publish content related to far-right riots.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) published on X on January 6, 2025. The post read:
Taxi driver, Andrew McIntyre, jailed for seven and a half years over Southport social media posts. This is Keir Starmer's England.
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Tue Jan 7 11:57:22 2025 UTC)
"Social media posts" alone did not lead to the sentence of Andrew McIntyre, the man in question. McIntyre, a taxi driver in the U.K., was charged with real criminal offenses. Although he did publish posts that provided evidence for his arrest, those posts are not the entire reason for his sentencing.
McIntyre created a Telegram channel called "Southport Wake Up," about the area where three children were fatally stabbed in July 2024. Posts and discussions from the group were found to be related to anti-immigration riots during the summer of 2024. The riots were launched in response to the mass stabbing attack, which was erroneously attributed to an immigrant.
According to the Merseyside Police, the regional policing organization of Southport, McIntyre pled guilty to what the news release stated was "encouraging violent disorder and criminal damage" and "possession of a bladed article in a public place." Although much of McIntyre's activity was online, none of those charges he pled guilty for are inherently related to posting on social media.
In an email sent to Lead Stories on January 8, 2025, Laurie Stocks-Moore, news team leader of the Merseyside Police, told us:
As we mentioned in our release, [McIntyre] was found with a flick knife and convicted of possession of a bladed article in public - this is clearly not related directly to social media posts, so the insinuation it was 'just social media posts' is objectively incorrect.
Other Lead Stories fact checks on claims related to the Southport killings and riots can be found here.
