The forum has a couple of international "observers" who contribute to debates from time to time. Whilst neither are part of FIDE management in the narrow sense, both are involved with FIDE working parties and how their Federation votes in FIDE elections.Jonathan Rogers wrote: I would like to invite others on this forum to suggest other suitable "referees" (by PM preferably) and we can then ask Andrew whether he is happy for them to be approached too.
We could also observe that while the notion of an integrated cycle kept FIDE to the previously agreed dates, the completion of the Grand Prix cycle has depended on FIDE's usual support model of finding local sponsors who want an event in their back yard and using the naming and publicity rights for it.
In a number of respects it doesn't matter who is in charge of the ECF, because the ECF has very little power and what power it has is the ability to make a nuisance of itself. The test of that is to imagine that the ECF disappeared overnight. That's not an extreme hypothesis given the ECF's financial difficulties in recent years. Much of English chess activity would continue unaffected, in the short term at least. The short term is a period of a year probably, lack of new grades being the eventual limiting factor.