Labour defeats Zack Polanski in Holborn and St Pancras by-election

Labour has held Keir Starmer’s former constituency in a by-election, comfortably defeating Green leader Zack Polanski.

Camden council leader Sagal Abdi-Wali won the Holborn and St Pancras by-election with 45.2 percent of the vote, with the Greens placing second with 32.8 percent.

The Conservatives came a distant third with 7.1 percent, followed by Reform on 5.9 percent and the Liberal Democrats with 3.4 percent, failing to hold their deposit.

Turnout for the by-election was 38.8 percent – down from the 2024 election turnout of 54.1 percent and lower than turnouts in recent by-elections in Makerfield (58.7 percent) and Gorton and Denton (47.5 percent).

Abdi-Wali came to the UK as a child refugee from Somalia, growing up in Camden where she was elected as a councillor in 2022, before going on to lead Camden council in May.

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The by-election, triggered by the resignation of Keir Starmer as an MP six weeks after he stood down as Prime Minister, was expected to be a close race following a Green surge in London’s local elections in May.

However, the party was mired in controversy over a ‘Zionism is racism’ motion passed at its annual conference last week.

Former Green Party leader Caroline Lucas hit out at Polanski on BBC’s Newsnight and said: “I would have hoped he would have been a strong critic of [that] motion, because the motion was flawed from top to bottom.”

When asked whether he should stand down as leader, she said: “Let’s see what happens in the coming days and weeks.”

Prime Minister Andy Burnham said the motion was “terrible judgement” on behalf of the Green Party and called on the party’s leadership to reverse the decision by their conference and not adopt that policy.

The by-election was the first since Andy Burnham became Labour leader and Prime Minister and the seventh since the general election in 2024.

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