A 21-year-old man from Birkenhead in Merseyside, north-west England, has been sentenced for sending racist death threats to Rishi Sunak in June 2024, when Sunak was still serving as the British prime minister. Liam Shaw pleaded guilty to sending two threatening and offensive emails to Sunak’s public parliamentary email address, which were discovered by Sunak’s personal assistant and reported to the police. The UK’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) confirmed that Shaw admitted to the charges and faced sentencing at Liverpool Magistrates’ Court.
The CPS explained that Shaw sent the abusive emails late at night using his mobile phone. Police traced the messages back to his email address and a hostel in Birkenhead where he was staying. He was arrested on September 3, 2024, and when confronted with the allegations, Shaw claimed he could not remember sending the emails and suggested he was “probably drunk” at the time. During questioning at a Liverpool police station, he chose to remain silent. The CPS charged him with two counts of sending offensive, indecent, obscene, or menacing communications via a public network, to which he later pleaded guilty.
At his sentencing, Shaw received 14 weeks of imprisonment for both counts, to run concurrently, but the sentence was suspended for 12 months under strict conditions. He was also ordered to complete 20 days of rehabilitation activities and undergo a six-month drug rehabilitation program. District Judge Timothy Boswell, in delivering the sentence, emphasized that abusing direct access to a constituency MP is a serious offense and described it as highly aggravating to the democratic process.
In addition to the suspended prison term, the court granted the CPS’s application for a restraining order lasting two years. Under its terms, Shaw is forbidden from making any contact with Sunak or his constituency office during that period. Matthew Dixon, Senior Crown Prosecutor at CPS Mersey Cheshire, stressed that while freedom of expression is a protected right, Shaw’s actions crossed into criminality. He described the racist and threatening messages as wholly unacceptable in a fair, just, and multi-racial society.
