A POLITICAL party whose candidate for a North Yorkshire seat has died says it will “definitely” field a replacement.

The sudden death of John Boakes, who was standing for the UK Independence Party (UKIP) in the Thirsk and Malton constituency, forced the May 6 poll to be postponed for three weeks.

It will now be held on May 27 in what is only the seventh time in history a General Election has been affected by a candidate dying during the campaign.

UKIP will be allowed to nominate a new candidate but Godfrey Bloom, the party’s MEP for Yorkshire and the Humber, said details of who this would be may not emerge until after May 6.

“We will definitely field another candidate, but at the moment we cannot say who that will be or when the details will be announced,” he said.

“What we will do is look at what happens on May 6 and see how we handle it from there. The announcement will almost certainly not happen before then because we do not know who will be elected nationally and what the voting patterns will be.

“If there is a hung parliament, Thirsk and Malton could be an extremely important election, which is one of the reasons we cannot be certain yet about how we will handle it. But at the moment, our main concern is John Boakes’s family. It’s such a tragic thing to have happened, particularly because he was such a nice fellow and a good, oldfashioned, straightforward man.”

Mr Boakes, who was in his 60s and lived in Kirby Knowle, near Thirsk, was due to contest the seat, which is notionally safe Tory territory, with Anne McIntosh (Conservative), Jonathan Roberts (Labour), Howard Keal (Liberal Democrat) and John Clark (Liberal).

All other nominations will be carried forward to the new poll unless a candidate chooses to withdraw and no fresh nominations will be allowed. Mr Boakes’ political rivals for the seat have all expressed their condolences following his death.