The English Defence League’s regional organisers met last night to discuss the crisis arising from the shock resignation earlier this week of Stephen Lennon and Kevin Carroll. They have issued a statement announcing that the EDL will now be run by a national committee comprising all the ROs, with Tim Ablitt appointed as the EDL’s chairman.

Ablitt hit the news back in 2010 when he and a number of other Dorset EDL members were arrested in connection with a suspected bomb plot against a Bournemouth mosque, although all were later released without charge. In 2011 Ablitt led an EDL protest against the “entrapment of the youth of Weymouth by extremist Muslims” – in a town where there are 308 Muslims out of a total population of 65,167 (0.5%).

He later became Dorset organiser for the now defunct far-right British Freedom party.