A CONSERVATIVE activist sentenced to jail for threatening violence against Labour MP Yvette Cooper has been supported by a Tory MP who said that his “heart is in the right place.”

Joshua Spencer was given nine weeks’ imprisonment today for sending messages to Ms Cooper claiming that he had paid “crackheads” £100 to beat her up.

In messages read to Leeds magistrates' court, Mr Spencer said: “We should have left no deal on the 29th before the whore Yvette got her hands on to it and voted to revoke democracy.

“She will pay. I’m already organising [to] hurt her. Amazing what crackheads will do for £100. I’m going to get her beat up.”

Mr Spencer received a character reference from Tory MP Andrea Jenkyns, whose statement said that he was “a decent and honest person whose heart is in the right place and who always helps people in need.”

It is understood that Mr Spencer attended Ms Jenkyn’s general-election count in December 2019 as a formal Tory representative, and stood in last year’s local elections as a Tory candidate — despite being on bail since the month before.

In her victim impact statement, Ms Cooper said that her constituency staff had given Mr Spencer “considerable” help with mental-health problems in 2017.

She added: “MPs across the country, particularly women MPs, have unfortunately become accustomed to a continued stream of abuse online and threats from a small number of people, often on the extreme fringes of politics.

“But this behaviour is not normal, and we must never treat it as so.”