This is exactly how political myth-making works: delete the inconvenient facts and replace them with flattering euphemisms. Lucy Connolly wasn’t imprisoned for “speaking out about immigration”. She pleaded guilty to inciting racial hatred after calling for migrant hotels to be set on fire while full of people. Stephen Yaxley-Lennon wasn’t jailed for merely “screening a documentary”. A High Court had found the allegations at its heart untrue and defamatory, imposed an injunction, and he subsequently admitted breaching that injunction ten times. Daniel Thomas has pleaded not guilty and is entitled to a fair trial. But describing his case as merely “criminal damage over an empty rubber dinghy” conveniently omits the footage appearing to show him slashing it with a blade while an emergency responder was still aboard. You can criticise immigration policy, sentencing policy or the justice system all you like. But rewriting what these people actually admitted, were found to have done, or are accused of doing isn’t criticism. It’s sanitisation. Stop turning criminal cases into little martyr stories by removing every fact that makes the protagonist look less heroic.