A journalist who was visited by police for allegedly stirring up racial hatred with a social media post made last year, will not be charged, the force has said.

Essex Police has today dropped its investigation into Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson over a tweet that was posted, and then quickly deleted, in November 2023.

It comes after the force was advised by Crown Prosecution Service lawyers that it's case failed to meet the evidential test. 

Pearson revealed officers from the force knocked on her door on Remembrance Day earlier this month to inform her of the probe, but could not give her any details about what post was being investigated or who made the complaint against her. 

She has since insisted in a ten-point post on 'X', formerly known as Twitter, that she was not 'racist' and that she 'did not post a racist tweet'. 

Now, Essex Police has confirmed 'no further action' will be taken against Pearson, and the 'investigation is closed'.

Speaking just minutes after her solicitor informed her the case had been dropped, Ms Pearson told the Daily Mail she would 'not wish this experience on anybody.'

'I was obviously shocked and devastated in the first place to have had the police on my doorstep on Remembrance Sunday, of all days, telling me I had put something up on social media which they said was stirring up racial hatred,' she said.

'And they wouldn't tell me what it was I was supposed to have said. To this day they have never confirmed which post it was all about.'

The Daily Telegraph columnist described the news as a victory for common sense but said it had taken a huge amount of unnecessary stress and effort to reach this point. 

Chief Constable Mark Hobrough, the National Police Chiefs' Council hate crime lead, will conduct an independent review of the force's handling of the case.

An Essex Police spokesperson said: 'We investigate crimes reported to us without fear or favour.

'We're sometimes faced with allegations of crime where people have strong opposing views.

'That's why we work so hard to remain impartial and to investigate allegations, regardless of where they might lead.'

Responding to the update today, Chris Philp MP, Shadow Home Secretary, said: 'It should never have come to this.

'The police should not be policing thought or speech. 'Police time should only be spent on criminality or behaviour likely to lead imminently to criminality

'I urge the Govt to urgently change the guidelines on NCHIs to stop it happening again.'

Ms Pearson added: 'These non-crime hate incidents are being handed out to perfectly decent people on the flimsiest of pretexts.

'We have seen children, nurses, business owners, being terrorised by the police for articulating things that would be considered absolutely fine to say down the pub or supermarket.'

She added: 'I think the policing senior echelons are incredibly woke and are infected with these misguided notions about social justice.

'They are policing not for the majority and solving crimes, they are policing on the basis of a minority viewpoint.

'Normal people want police to come round when they have been burgled, they want serious things to be investigated. They don't want this madness.'

The complaint related to a tweet showing an image of two police officers standing next to two men holding the flag of a Pakistani political party.

Ms Pearson had confused the flag with that of Hamas, tagged the Metropolitan Police and accused the officers of 'smiling with the Jew haters' in the post.

She said she deleted the message as soon as she realised her mistake, so the message was live for less than two hours.

'What are people supposed to do after they make an honest mistake apart from delete it?' she said.

The columnist said she consulted senior lawyers and police officers about the case, and all agreed there was no basis for a criminal investigation.

'I have to ask what is the motive in investigating a journalist in this way,' she said.

'Was it to scare people to stop them saying things they might disagree with?'.

A CPS spokesman said: 'The CPS reviewed evidence relating to allegations of inciting racial hatred or any other communications offences following an Essex police investigation.

'We have decided that the case failed to meet the evidential test.

'The complainant has been informed by Essex police today.'

The forces actions were previously condemned by former Prime Minister Boris Johnson who questioned whether investigating hundreds of non-crime hate incidents was worthy of officers' time.

Kemi Badenoch, the new Conservative Party leader, also backed the Telegraph columnist, saying that police visiting her home was 'absolutely wrong'.

'There has been a long-running problem with people not taking free speech seriously,' Mrs Badenoch told The Telegraph.

She added: 'We shouldn't have journalists getting visited by the police for expressing opinions. That's absolutely wrong, we need to look at the laws around non-crime hate incidents.'

'Keir Starmer says he is someone who believes in these things. Now he needs to actually show that he does believe it. All we've seen from him is the opposite.'

The complainant, who is not Muslim nor one of the people in the photo, told the Guardian: 'Pearson tweeted something that had nothing to do with Palestine or the London protest. Her description of the two people of colour as Jew haters is racist and inflammatory.

'I was concerned about the tweet that Pearson put out last year so much so that I reported it to the police. She could have tweeted an apology stating she was wrong. She didn't.'

Ms Pearson said she was told the investigation was about a post on social media platform X, and that officers were unable to give her details of the post in question or identify her accuser due to laws governing procedure.

She added: 'This was the most extraordinary overreach and state intrusion into my private life and I don't think I did anything wrong and I think their response was outrageous.'

The Times also revealed last week that UK police forces had recorded more than 13,000 non-crime hate incidents in the past 12 months, including against schoolchildren, vicars and doctors.

Former officer Harry Miller claimed 'the system is broken' and stressed that non-crime hate incidents were 'only supposed to be recorded as a form of intelligence in order to prevent future crime'.

However, officers previously said Pearson's tweet was being treated as an alleged criminal offence of inciting racial hatred, rather than a non-crime hate incident. 

Responding to the statistics, an Essex Police spokesman said: 'Our work has seen crime fall in Essex, with 9,300 fewer recorded crimes in the last year and 20,000 fewer than five years ago.

'We also know we have the support of our community, with 77 per cent of people in Essex saying they think we do a good or excellent job.

'If someone reports an incident perceived to be motivated by hate or hostility, it will be recorded in accordance with the national standards and process as set out by the College of Policing.

'With every report of this kind made to us, we must consider future risks of significant harm set against freedom of speech and act upon — and record — incidents proportionately and appropriately.'