Neo-Nazi who spoke of ‘exterminating’ Jews jailed for life over MP murder plot

A neo-Nazi from Lancashire who talked about killing Jews as “exterminating vermin” has been jailed for life for plotting to murder an MP with a machete.

Jack Renshaw, 23, who was revealed to be a predatory paedophile during the investigation, performed the ‘Heil Hitler’ salute in court as he was led away after being told he would serve at least 20 years.

In 2017, a year after he told a far-right rally in Blackpool that Jews were “parasites,” he told a group of fellow far-right activists at a pub that he planned to kill MP Rosie Cooper.

One of the activists later became a whistle-blower, telling anti-fascist organisation HOPE Not Hate about Renshaw’s plans. The group then told the police, who swooped on Renshaw and arrested him.

Renshaw, a member of the now-banned National Action, had already bought a 19-inch machete and told police that he wanted to replicate the murder of MP Jo Cox.

He also made threats to kill a female police officer who discovered that he had been grooming boys as young as 13 online, offering cash for sex and explicit photos. He had conducted internet searches to understand how best to cut the jugular.

In her ruling on Friday, Judge Justice McGowan said Renshaw had made “detailed arrangements” for the double killing and had researched Cooper’s itinerary.

Justice McGowan said Renshaw had a “perverted view of history and politics” and that his intended target was in fact democracy, adding that it was “bizarre” that he felt Cox’s killing was commendable.

The whistle-blower, who has received death threats from neo-Nazis but whose actions probably saved Cooper’s life, recalled how Renshaw had discussed attacking a synagogue, and had dismissed concerns that children could be killed.

“Whether you kill an old Jew or a young Jew, you don’t say when you are exterminating vermin ‘oh look, it’s just a baby bit of vermin, it’s a baby rat or a baby Jew,’ you just kill vermin,” he is recorded as saying.

Last year Renshaw was jailed for three years for inciting racial hatred after he told a Blackpool crowd in March 2016 that Jews were “parasites” and that Britain took the wrong side in the Second World War because it didn’t pursue Hitler’s final solution.

During a speech in Yorkshire a month earlier, he said Hitler was “right in many senses” but wrong to “show mercy to people who did not deserve mercy,” adding that Jews should be “eradicated”.