Jack Renshaw jailed over plot to kill MP Rosie Cooper

Convicted paedophile Jack Renshaw appeared to give a Nazi salute in the dock as he was sentenced to life imprisonment at the Old Bailey today, Friday.

The 23-year-old bought a 19-inch gladius knife in preparation for a plot to murder West Lancashire MP Rose Cooper and exact revenge on a female police officer who was investigating him for child sex offences.

The knife Jack Renshaw bought in order to kill MP Rosie Cooper

Renshaw, from Skelmersdale, announced his bloody intentions during a meeting of the banned far right group National Action at the Friar Penketh on Barbauld Street in July 2017.

But his plan was scuppered by whistle-blower Robbie Mullen, once year after Mrs Cooper’s fellow Labour MP Jo Cox was murdered by an extremist.

The Friar Penketh

And he was today handed a minimum of 20 years behind bars by Justice Maura McGowan after admitting making preparations to kill the member and threatening to kill police officer Victoria Henderson.

Sentencing, 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.

“You praised the murder of Jo Cox in tweets and posts in June 2017, and in some bizarre way you saw this as a commendable act and set out to replicate that behaviour.

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

Renshaw – who was jailed for 16 months in June last year for grooming two underage boys online – raised his arm in an apparent Nazi salute as he was led to the cells, with a supporter in the public gallery shouting ‘we're with you Jack’.

He had Googled ‘how long to die after jugular cut’ and researched Mrs Cooper's schedule as he formed the plot.

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."

Prosecutor Duncan Atkinson read out a victim impact statement on Mrs Cooper’s befalf, in which she described the plot against her as being like ‘something out of a horror movie’ and caused some of her staff to leave their jobs.

National Action leader Christopher Lythgoe, of Greymist Avenue in Woolston, was jailed for eight years in July 2018 after he was found guilty of being a member of the proscribed group.

Christoper Lythgoe

Charity Hope Not Hate, with Mr Mullen's help, also exposed how National Action used a converted lock-up on Wellington Street in Howley as a gym to train for an 'imminent race war'.

In a statement, he said: "The last two years have been horrendous, stressful and very, very hard but I wouldn't change a single thing I did."

National Action's Howley gym

Will Chatterton, head of investigations for counter terrorism policing in the North West, said Renshaw's 20-year jail term reflected 'the vile and shocking nature' of his views.

When asked about the Nazi salute given by Renshaw in court, he added: "It was a sort of vile and disrespectful act, which I guess demonstrates the fact that he's a dangerous individual who still holds appalling and extreme views."

Hope Not Hate chief executive Nick Lowles believes that the authorities 'took their eye off National Action' before the charity acted.

He said: "Former National Action members are still active, successor organisations are being formed and a threat still clearly remains.

"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, from the Crown Prosecution Service, said the plot was 'also an attack on the democratic process'.