Ukip leader Nigel Farage says he will not fight the Newark by-election sparked by disgraced former Tory minister Patrick Mercer’s decision to quit over a cash-for-questions scandal.
Mr Mercer resigned his seat as MP for Newark, in Nottinghamshire, after facing a six-month ban from parliament.
The former army colonel is alleged to have tabled questions in the House of Commons and offered a Westminster security pass after signing a deal that paid him £4,000 for seeking the readmission of Fiji to the Commonwealth.
Mr Mercer resigned the Tory whip after the allegations emerged in May last year, and said at the time he would quit the House of Commons at the 2015 general election.
However, after the Commons Standards Committee’s decision to impose a six-month parliamentary suspension, he brought forward his resignation date.
Mr Mercer said on Tuesday night that he was “ashamed” and that now he had to “put it right”.
“As an ex-soldier I believe that when I have got something wrong you have got to fess up and get on with it,” he said.
“No point in shilly shallying and trying to avoid it. What’s happened has happened and I’m ashamed of it.”
The resignation will trigger a by-election for Mr Mercer’s Nottinghamshire seat, and there had been sepculation that Mr Farage would chase his party’s first House of Commons seat.
Earlier on Wednesday, Mr Farage told the BBC: “I know that winning one seat in Westminster would completely transform the landscape for us as a party in terms of our prospects.
“What I’ve got to work out is, is it the right seat for me. And I just…my reservation in my mind is I haven’t particularly got connections with the local area.”
However, he later said he would not be fighting the seat. He told the BBC: “I don’t want to do anything that deflects from the European election campaign, so I am not going to stand in this by-election.
“I want to focus the next three weeks on winning the European elections.”
Mr Mercer secured a Conservative majority of 16,152 in 2010, but Ukip’s popularity has surged in the past four years.
A Conservative spokesman said: “We agree that Patrick Mercer needs to stand down and that there should be a by-election so the people of Newark can have a new MP.”
The by-election will take place after next month’s European elections.