Viscount found guilty after calling for violence against Brexit campaigner Gina Miller

Sign up to our free Brexit and beyond email for the latest headlines on what Brexit is meaning for the UK

Sign up to our Brexit email for the latest insight

Please enter a valid email address

Please enter a valid email address

SIGN UP

I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice

A viscount who offered money for someone to “run over” Brexit legal challenger Gina Miller has been found guilty on two charges of posting malicious comments.

Rhodri Colwyn Philipps, the 4th Viscount St Davids, was told he faces time in prison.

Philipps, 50, wrote a message on Facebook four days after Ms Miller won a landmark High Court challenge against the Government last year, offering “£5,000 for the first person to ‘accidentally’ run over this bloody troublesome first generation immigrant”.

He described her as a “boat jumper” and added: “If this is what we should expect from immigrants, send them back to their stinking jungles”.

Philipps, of Knightsbridge, central London, was convicted of two counts of sending menacing messages on a public electronic communications network and cleared of one count after a trial at Westminster Magistrates Court.

Senior district judge Emma Arbuthnot said: “I had no doubt that the first post was menacing... You were offering money to have her killed.”

She added: “Looking at the language you use to Ms Miller ... ‘f****** jumper’. That is not political debate.

“To some who don’t know you they would perceive the offers of bounty as menacing.”

Ms Arbuthnot found the post about Ms Miller to be racially aggravated and told Philipps he faces a prison sentence.

Asked what he meant by the term “immigrant”, Philipps told the court, “She’s not part of the future”. He added: “She’s been here less than a generation.”

Philipps, who was defending himself, also said: “If you’re in the public eye, people are going to say nasty things about you. It’s the rough and tumble of public life.”

He will be sentenced at Westminster Magistrates’ Court at 2pm on Thursday.

Ms Miller told a court she felt “violated” after learning about the threatening posts.

The Guyana-born businesswoman came to public attention when she led a successful legal challenge against the Government, resulting in a ruling that it had to consult Parliament before beginning the formal Brexit process.

Prosecutor Philip Stott said: “In addition to finding it offensive, racist and hateful, she was extremely concerned that someone would threaten to have her run over for a bounty.

“She took the threat seriously, and it contributed to her employing professional security for her protection.”