O’Mara, 37, quit the Labour party in July 2018 after being suspended over misogynistic and homophobic comments posted online.
These included inviting members of Girls Aloud to an orgy and saying the musician Jamie Cullum should be “sodomised with his own piano”. He was also accused of shouting abuse at a woman he had met on a dating app.
He apologised and was reinstated at the start of July 2018, but quit the party a few days later, saying in an open letter to his constituents that he had been “made unfairly to feel like a criminal” and felt Labour had not conducted a fair investigation. However, he refused to call a by-election and continued as an independent MP.
His victory against former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg in the Sheffield Hallam seat was one of the shocks of the 2017 general election.
Arnold, who describes himself as a blogger and a digital marketing professional, rose to prominence in 2014 when he set up a social media account called Britain Furst, intended to troll the right-wing political group Britain First.
He told BBC 5 Live that he had been working for Mr O’Mara for eight weeks but had known him “for absolutely years”. When asked about the method of his resignation, he added: “I appreciate from the outside it looks like a really horrible thing to do.”
“We’re left with a situation where there’s people in Sheffield Hallam who are not being represented, there are people who are waiting on their immigration status, there are people who are not getting houses, there are people having their benefits stopped and all these things stopped just because he’s not prepared to do his job properly,” he said.
“Yes it was a ridiculous statement but it’s the one thing I think might motivate change.”
