Labour holds Keir Starmer’s old seat – shutting down Polanski’s bid to get into the House of Commons.
LONDON — Zack Polanski’s bid for a Westminster seat ended in defeat Friday as Labour comfortably held Holborn and St Pancras in a by-election.
Labour’s Sagal Abdi-Wali won the central London House of Commons seat with 12,292 votes, a majority of 3,364 over Green Leader Polanski, who came second with 8,928.
The poll was triggered when Keir Starmer stood down as an MP last month after being ousted as U.K. prime minister.
It is a symbolic early boost for Starmer’s replacement Andy Burnham, who has shifted the ruling Labour Party to the left since taking charge and toughened the U.K.’s stance on Israel amid criticism that Starmer’s response to the war in Gaza was flat-footed.
The north London seat has been held by Labour since its creation in 1983 — but the left-wing Green Party poured significant resources into trying to get its high-profile leader elected.
Abdi-Wali got 45% of the vote – down four points on Labour’s 2024 general election result. Polanski won 33% of the votes cast — a 22-point leap on the party’s 2024 result, but still some way short of taking the traditionally-safe Labour seat.
A defeated Polanski – who had gambled on getting a toehold in parliament to boost the Greens’ profile – insisted he would stay on as party leader, telling broadcasters: “I’ve taken a loss tonight, but our movement is so much bigger than one election or one motion.”
His rival for the Green candidacy Hamza Chowdhury — a Green councillor in Camden — said: “This is a fucking win mate. Labour might be celebrating now but wait till 2029 when we wipe the floor with them.”
Abdi-Wali, who arrived in the U.K. as a child refugee from Somalia, said her victory was “deeply personal” and vowed to work with Burnham to tackle homelessness. She said she wants to see Thames Water — the giant private water company that serves her constituents — brought into public ownership.
U.K. polling expert John Curtice said the Holborn result is “still by far and away [the Greens’] second best ever result in a parliamentary by-election” — but warned the Greens are “now operating in a more politically competitive environment.”
“The trouble is that when you manage to bring down an unpopular leader of your opponents, you’ve then got to deal with the consequences, which in this case is that Labour have put in place somebody who is more popular,” Curtice said of the party’s boast that it helped persuade Labour MPs to oust Starmer in favor of the more left-wing Burnham.
A Labour official said voters who were not giving the party a hearing earlier in the year were now listening again.
Curtice pointed out that while Labour is enjoying a substantial Burnham bounce they are “still short of where they were in 2024.”
Green dissent
Polanski’s defeat also comes as Green Party divisions spill into the open after members passed a controversial motion declaring Zionism to be a form of racism at their party conference last weekend.
One London councillor said the move had been “electoral suicide,” and shortly after polls closed Thursday the veteran former MP Caroline Lucas told the BBC that Polanski, who did not attend the vote in Brighton, “should have been there” and should now “show the leadership that was frankly missing on Sunday.”
Asked if Polanski should stand down, Lucas — a former party leader who was the first Green MP to be elected to the House of Commons — said: “I think let’s just see what happens in the coming days and weeks.”
A senior Green local politician allied to Polanski, granted anonymity to discuss internal matters, said: “You can’t really force a coup” in the Green Party — highlighting that a leadership election is not due for another year.
Polanski did not say if he agrees with party members who voted for the motion, which has been sharply criticized by Israel, rival British parties, and the chief of the Jewish Greens, when questioned at the by-election count.
He told broadcasters: “As I say, the displacement of the Palestinian people, the genocide, is clearly racist.”
This developing story has been updated.