Labour wins Holborn and St Pancras as Polanski stays leader under pressure

Labour has held Holborn and St Pancras in a by-election triggered by former Prime Minister Keir Starmer's resignation as an MP. The party's candidate, Camden Council leader Sagal Abdiwali, won 12,292 votes, 45% of the total. Green Party leader Zack Polanski came second with 8,928 votes, 33%. Labour's majority was 3,364.

The Conservatives came third with 1,922 votes. Reform UK was fourth, the Liberal Democrats fifth, and other candidates included the Workers Party and Restore Britain. Labour's vote share fell compared with the 2024 general election, while the Greens increased their share substantially. Analysis suggested much of the Green increase came from a pro-Palestinian independent vote rather than directly from Labour, and Labour's position improved after Andy Burnham replaced Keir Starmer as Prime Minister.

Abdiwali, who arrived in the UK as a refugee from Somalia as a child and grew up in Camden, said the campaign had offered hope rather than fear. She said she would press the government on tackling rough sleeping, bringing Thames Water into public ownership and improving opportunities for young people. She said Andy Burnham's recent visit to a local homelessness charity showed Labour was serious about the issue.

The by-election was widely seen as an early test for Burnham's premiership and for Polanski's leadership of the Greens. Labour sources said they were confident of victory, while Green figures played down expectations as polls closed. A Green statement said the party had run a positive campaign and that being the main challenger showed how far it had come. One insider said losing by no more than about 5,000 votes would count as some kind of success.

Polanski said he would stay on as leader. He said the Greens had more than tripled their vote share, although he wanted to win, and that voters had told him they wanted to give Burnham a chance. He pointed to Green policies on rent controls, the climate crisis and nationalising Thames Water. He said the party had grown to around 220,000 members and that no one would be excluded on the basis of faith or religion.

The result was overshadowed by a row over a motion passed at the Green Party conference. The motion declared Zionism a form of racism and called for a single democratic Palestinian state in all historic Palestine, which critics said implied the end of Israel. Polanski did not attend the vote because he was campaigning. He repeatedly declined interview requests about it during the campaign. After the result, he said he would have voted against the unamended motion but would have supported it as amended. He said he grew up in a Zionist household but had changed his views, and that the displacement of Palestinians and the genocide were clearly racist. He also said criticism of Israel should not be conflated with antisemitism.

The motion was condemned by Jewish groups, other parties and the Prime Minister. Andy Burnham called it completely wrong and a terrible judgment, saying it effectively ruled out a two-state solution, and called on the Greens to reverse it. The Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Jewish Leadership Council criticised the party, and some sister Green parties in Europe also objected. Within the Greens, former leader Caroline Lucas apologised to the Jewish community and said Polanski should have attended and voted. Former co-leaders Jonathan Bartley and Ellie Chowns criticised his leadership, and the chair of Jewish Greens, Vivian Lichtenstein, called on him to resign. Other Green figures said he retained support among much of the membership.

Polanski said he could carry on as leader and that the party was democratic and member-led. He denied losing control of the party. But the result and the conference row have left him facing questions about his position, with a leadership election due next summer. For Labour, the win was a relief after local election losses in May and a previous by-election defeat to the Greens in Gorton and Denton. Supporters said it showed Labour could see off the Green challenge on its left, as well as Reform UK on its right.