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Labour holds Holborn and St Pancras in a key byelection test for Andy Burnham
Labour candidate Sagal Abdi-Wali defeated Green leader Zack Polanski in Keir Starmer’s former seat. The result offers relief for Prime Minister Andy Burnham and raises fresh questions about the Greens’ reach in urban areas.
Labour kept the Holborn and St Pancras seat in a closely watched byelection that was seen as an early political test for Prime Minister Andy Burnham and a measure of the Greens’ ability to win over younger progressive voters in north London.
According to The Guardian, Labour’s Sagal Abdi-Wali, the leader of Camden council, won 12,292 votes, or 45%, while Green party leader Zack Polanski took 8,928 votes, or 33%.
The byelection was triggered after Keir Starmer resigned the seat in September. In the run-up to polling day, the contest was framed as a test of whether Burnham, nearly three months into his premiership, could rebuild Labour’s standing among voters alienated under Starmer over housing, the climate crisis and the war in Gaza.
The Guardian reported turnout at 38.7%, the lowest for any byelection held in England during this parliament and 15.4 percentage points below the 2024 general election.
The constituency had drawn particular attention because of its demographics: large numbers of students, renters and younger voters, with nearly half of residents aged 18 to 34, as well as a substantial share born overseas.
Abdi-Wali had campaigned on her local roots and her background in community work, homelessness and housing policy. After the result, she said, according to The Guardian, that she hoped the moment would say something about who gets to belong in public life, in what appeared to be a response to comments made earlier in the campaign by Reform UK’s Zia Yusuf questioning whether she was British.
For Burnham, the result brings reassurance in his first major electoral test since succeeding Starmer in July. But the weak turnout also points to continued challenges in motivating urban voters, especially in London, where the Greens took control of three councils in May’s local elections, The Guardian reported.
The loss also puts pressure on Polanski inside his own party. The final stretch of the campaign was overshadowed by turmoil at the Green conference, where members passed a motion treating Zionism as a form of racism. Polanski, who is Jewish, did not take part in that vote because he had left the conference early to campaign in the constituency.
Before the result, Burnham had called the motion completely wrong and urged that it be reversed. After the count, former Green MP and former party leader Caroline Lucas stopped short of fully backing Polanski and said the leadership shown during that dispute had been lacking, according to The Guardian.
After his defeat, Polanski told the BBC he would remain Green leader. He also told Sky News, as cited by The Guardian, that the result was a good one for the party and argued that the Greens would become a bigger electoral threat to Labour.
The Guardian also noted that, despite a large activist effort in the seat, Polanski’s vote total did not suggest a major expansion of the Greens’ local base compared with the combined 2024 performance of the party and pro-Gaza independent candidate Andrew Feinstein.
Sources
About this piece. Written by El Notero with AI assistance, from reporting published by the outlet cited above. El Notero did no original reporting on this story.
