UKIP MEP for Worcestershire and the West Midlands, James Carver says the ousting of the party leader was inevitable.

After the members voted to remove Mr Bolton from the top job, after less than five months, on Saturday, Mr Carver said: “The decision to oust Henry Bolton was inevitable.

“The whole sorry saga of Henry’s tenure saddens me immensely as I believed his election as leader would be the best move for the party – events since Christmas destroyed that belief. It has certainly not been a happy New Year for UKIP, so far.

“Whichever way the vote had gone, it would have been given more weight had it been a postal vote of the whole membership, rather than a decision of the 1,500 members who were able to attend Saturday’s EGM in Birmingham. We are, after all, a party borne from a desire to give the man and woman in the street a say in national politics.”

Mr Carver was not able to attend the meeting in Birmingham where members decided to sack Mr Bolton over controversies about his relationship with model and journalist Jo Marney.

As one of the party’s assistant deputy leaders, Mr Carver become de facto number two to Mr Bolton when Mr Bolton’s deputy leader and another assistant deputy, Mike Hookem, resigned.

Despite this, Mr Carver’s spokeswoman says he has no intention of standing for the leadership in the coming contest, the fourth since September 2016.

The apparent disarray in the national party could be reflected at the local level in Worcester.

The city party’s Twitter and Facebook accounts have not been active since mid-December, and the Facebook account for Paul Hickling, who stood as the party’s candidate in Worcester at the 2017 election, says he has joined the Conservative Party. The phone number listed for the party seems to be switched off.

At the time of publication, the chairman of Worcester's branch Owen Cleary had not responded to a request for comment.