Labour MP Rosie Cooper quits politics over neo-Nazi assassination plot

20 September 2022, 14:36

Labour MP Rosie Cooper said she will step down after a neo-Nazi assassination plot against her.

Cooper said her announcement will “come as a surprise to many people” as she recently won reselection to stand in her seat of West Lancashire for the next general election. She has held the seat since 2005.

The 72-year-old MP is stepping away from the House of Commons to become chair of Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust. She said her reselection as Labour candidate was prior to the recruitment process for the NHS trust.

Cooper said: “It has been an incredible honour and privilege to have served the people of West Lancashire for the last 17 years. I have loved every minute, even the most difficult times.”

“The decision to apply for the role was taken after a considerable period of soul searching and reflection. The events I have faced over the last few years are well documented and undoubtedly have taken their toll.”

The MP was a victim of a plot in 2018 by the neo-Nazi paedophile Jack Renshaw who wanted to kill the MP with a machete.

Jack Renshaw, then aged 23, was jailed for life with a minimum sentence of 20 years at the Old Bailey in 2019. He was a member of the terrorist group National Action.

He also had plans to take hostages in a pub and to lure and kill police officer there who had previously investigated him for child sex offences.

At the trial in 2019, Renshaw raised his arm in a Nazi salute as he was taken to the cells.

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Cooper’s statement did not confirm when the MP would step down, but it is expected she will leave parliament by November. This should then trigger a by-election in her seat which she won in 2019 with an 8,000 vote majority.

Cooper has spent her entire parliamentary career as a backbencher and is a longstanding member of the health and social care select committee.

She previously spoke in the Commons of the plot against her. "I was to be murdered to send a message to this place. Members of this House are regularly abused and attacked. Our freedoms, our way of life, our democracy is under threat,” she said in 2019.