If he has a British passport he could.
Don't quote me on this but if memory serves typically players need to remain in the country for (if memory serves it's around this figure) 3,200 day to automatically qualify. These days also need to be consecutive and once a player leaves the country for more than (dare I say, 30 days), the 'counter' starts again from 'day one'.
So in principle you couldn't be in the country for say, 1,000 days and then return two years later and do the remaining 2,000+ days.