Neo-Nazi Jack Renshaw has been jailed for life with a minimum of 20 years over a politically-motivated plot to kill MP Rosie Cooper.

Several supporters shouted "we are with you, Jack" after the 23-year-old was sentenced at the Old Bailey for preparing acts of terrorism against the Labour MP and for threatening to kill a police officer who had been investigating him.

Renshaw, who raised his arm in what appeared to be a Nazi salute as he was taken away, pleaded guilty to both offences in June last year.

The court had been told that he planned to kill Mrs Cooper with a 19in (48cm) Gladius knife and that his plan had only been scuppered after he announced it during a meeting at a pub in July 2017.

Also at the meeting was acquaintance Robbie Mullen, who later shared details of the plan with campaign group Hope Not Hate.


Mr Mullen, from Cheshire, said after the sentencing hearing: "The last two years have been horrendous, stressful and very, very hard but I wouldn't change a single thing I did."

Image: Renshaw planned to kill Rosie Cooper MP with a huge knife

In a victim impact statement read at the Old Bailey during the sentencing hearing, Mrs Cooper said the threat had seemed like "something out of a horror movie".

In a statement after the sentencing, Mrs Cooper said: "My deepest wish is that this case is the last occasion when any public servant, any politician, has their life threatened for simply doing their job.

"I believe today justice has been served - not for me personally, but for every MP and public servant, and for our democratic way of life which affords us the privilege of free speech, without fear of violent retribution."

The police officer Renshaw threatened to kill was Victoria Henderson, who had been investigating him for grooming young boys for sex. He was given a concurrent seven-year jail sentence for this.

She had told the court she suffered some sleepless nights before his arrest but that she was determined not to let him ruin her life.

Image: Renshaw was also convicted last year of child sex charges

Sentencing Renshaw, Mrs Justice McGowan said: "Your perverted view of history and current politics has caused you to believe it right to demonise groups simply because they are different from you.

"This is a case in which only a sentence of life imprisonment can meet the appalling seriousness of your offending."

Nick Lowles, Hope Not Hate's chief executive, said: "Today an MP and a police officer are alive thanks to the work of Robbie Mullen and [Hope Not Hate's head of intelligence] Matthew Collins, and Jack Renshaw will not re-enter society for a very long time.



"Too little effort has gone into understanding the mindset of those attracted into this violent, nihilistic breed of far-right terrorism, or the culture from which they emerge - or then enter."

Jenny Hopkins, head of the counter terrorism division at the Crown Prosecution Service, said: "A crime of this type against anyone is a serious matter but when our MPs are targeted it is also an attack on the democratic process and public service."

Renshaw, from Skelmersdale, Lancashire, was jailed for three years in April last year for stirring up racial hatred after he called for the genocide of Jewish people.

In June, he was jailed for 16 months after grooming two underage boys online.

Renshaw denied being a member of the banned right-wing National Action group and a jury was unable to reach a verdict on that charge, with prosecutors saying in April that there would be no re-trial.