A senior Ukip MEP has announced he is leaving the party over its growing links to former EDL leader Tommy Robinson.

Patrick O’Flynn said he had tried to dissuade Ukip’s leadership from its “apparent and growing fixation” with the far-right activist, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon.

Unexpectedly, Mr O’Flynn, the party’s former economics spokesperson, said he would be joining the continuity SDP (Social Democratic Party), which has practically zero elected representatives at any other level of government.

Ukip has been beset by huge internal strife since the EU referendum in 2016, careering through a succession of short-lived leaders, losing swathes of councillors, and tanking in the polls.

The latest row to hit the party emerged last week after current leader, MEP Gerard Batten, appointed Mr Robinson, a prominent media figure in so-called “alt-right” circles as an advisor. The decision was immediately condemned by some factions in the party, including former leader Nigel Farage.

Mr Batten claimed “high profile” figure had been “persecuted by the state because of his views” and was “good to have on our side”.

In a statement Mr O’Flynn said: “Without any mandate from the membership or the party’s elected ruling body to go down this path, Gerard is transforming what UKIP stands for and offers to voters. Many longstanding party members have already left as a result.

“Today I am joining them because I have reached the sorry conclusion that UKIP under its current direction and at this decisive moment has become an impediment to the Brexit campaigning that I have energetically pursued for many years.”

In an ironic twist of fate the tiny continuity SDP, whose members rejected the old SDP’s merger with the Liberal party to form the Liberal Democrats, will now have the same number of MEPs as the Lib Dems – one. The party that exists today was legally founded in 1990 after the disillusion of the original continuity group by David Owen, which lasted from 1988 until 1990.

The SDP has taken a eurosceptic turn since the 1990s, when it split from the Labour party principally because it considered Labour too anti-EU. In 2016 it campaigned for Brexit.

It received a total of 469 votes across the country at the 2017 general election, totalling 0.0%.

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“The key question in British politics now is which party are millions of sensible, moderate Brexit voters betrayed by establishment parties but wishing no tie-up with Tommy Robinson supposed to vote for? The answer, alas, is clearly not UKIP,” Mr O’Flynn said of his decision.