Nocturnal 
Labour has held onto Sir Keir Starmer’s old seat, with Camden Council leader Sagal Abdi-Wali beating Green Party leader Zack Polanski in the Holborn and St Pancras by-election.
Abdi-Wali took 12,292 votes, 45% of the total, while Polanski polled 8,928, or 33%, according to the full declared results. Conservative candidate Ewan Cameron came a distant third with 1,922 votes, with Reform UK and the Liberal Democrats trailing further behind.
The by-election was triggered after Starmer announced last month he was standing down from the Commons, having already left Downing Street. It was widely billed as a two-horse race between Labour and the Greens, who have been gaining ground in London, including taking control of three councils at May’s local elections.
Turnout was just 38.7%, the lowest of any by-election held in England during this parliament and 15.4 percentage points down on the 2024 general election, according to the Guardian.
Why it matters
The result is seen as a significant relief for Andy Burnham, who faced his first major electoral test since becoming prime minister. Labour chair Bridget Phillipson told Times Radio the win showed “Labour’s message of hope is really cutting through.”
But the historically low turnout suggests Labour still faces a tough fight to win back urban, left-leaning voters in London who had drifted towards the Greens over issues including welfare and Gaza.
In her victory speech, Abdi-Wali, who came to the UK from Somalia as a child refugee in the 1990s, spoke emotionally about “those who seek to divide us”, in an apparent reference to Reform UK’s Zia Yusuf, who had suggested she was not British after the by-election was called. “This is Camden and this is Britain,” she said, adding that she hoped the result showed “who gets to belong”.
She also paid tribute to Starmer and former MP Frank Dobson, saying she was “deeply grateful for their service” and the “foundations they’ve left for the next generation”.
Pressure mounts on Polanski
The defeat caps a difficult week for Polanski, whose party voted at its conference to declare that “Zionism is racism”, a motion that drew widespread criticism from across the political spectrum. Polanski abstained on the vote but has since appeared to back it, telling reporters he believed what was happening in Gaza amounted to “an ongoing genocide” and that this was “clearly racism”, while also saying both Jewish and Palestinian people “can and must be helped”.
Vivien Lichtenstein, chair of Jewish Greens, called on Polanski to resign as leader over the row. Former Green leader Caroline Lucas stopped short of calling for him to go but told BBC Newsnight she wanted him to “show the leadership that was frankly missing on Sunday” when the motion passed.
Polanski insisted he has no intention of standing down. “Of course I can carry on as leader of the Green Party,” he told the BBC. “We’re a party of 220,000 members. I’ve taken a loss tonight but we are going to build and we are going to grow.”
For now, Abdi-Wali becomes the new MP for Holborn and St Pancras, while questions over Polanski’s leadership and the Greens’ internal divisions over their conference motion look set to continue.
