Thirsk waits to vote after election postponed

Delay due to candidate's death means Yorkshire constituency could provide high-profile verdict on any post-result deals

There could hardly be anywhere nicer to escape the sound and fury of election day, but the one corner of the United Kingdom exempt from the hoo-ha saw little change from an ordinary Thursday spoiled by thin drizzle.

Maybe that was keeping ballot box refugees away, speculated staff at the Blacksmith's Arms in Thirsk, where regulars called in as usual and nothing else interrupted the usual pattern of a weekday afternoon.

The daily round continued equally peacefully in Malton, the other half of the only constituency in the country where not a single vote was cast. The death of UKIP's candidate John Boakes on 22 April triggered the unusual constitutional device of "countermanding", or annulling an election. Thirsk and Malton's Yorkshiremen and women must wait three weeks, until Thursday, 27 May.

Local election officers have done their best to spread the news in the last fortnight, but inevitably it didn't get through to everyone. A device so rare that it has happened only seven times in parliamentary elections (including the last one, when the Liberal Democrat in South Staffordshire died during the campaign) needed more time to explain.

"We've had people turn up at village halls this morning getting extremely confused as to why there was no polling booth there," said Jonathan Roberts, Labour's challenger to Tory Anne Mackintosh whose notional majority (this is a new seat, with major boundary changes) is a whopping 14,117.

Roberts spent part of the day trying to get the message out, along with his own policies, to hamlets between the huge White Horse carved on Sutton Bank and the grand old fortress of Edwardian liberalism at Castle Howard.

"People are feeling a bit strange," agreed Mike Skehan, town clerk of Malton, who woke like most of his neighbours to final appeals to do something which none of them can, thanks to the countermanding. "It's peaceful, I suppose, but there is quite a lot of discontent that the election law works like this, and that we can't take part along with everyone else."

Ditto on the seafront at Filey, whose serene North Sea bay has been added to a constituency which, in landscape terms, has everything. Peter Hepworth, on a day off and out from York for a trip with his two children, said: "One or two of the shopkeepers have said how odd it seems. I mustn't get under the spell. I've to vote when we get back home."

Thirsk and Malton's trance may be reversed with a vengeance on 27 May, which will provide a high-profile verdict on any dealing which follows an uncertain result in the rest of the country.

Roberts jumped on to a train to London this afternoon "to do some media work on how Thirsk and Malton could become a key battleground".

Skehan said: "If one side wins a definite victory, then I expect we'll all go to sleep again. But if it's a 'draw', then look out Thirsk and Malton: the whole political circus will descend on us. Let's enjoy this break."