Last week’s Holborn and St Pancras by-election, triggered by Keir Starmer’s decision to stand down as an MP, produced few surprises. Labour’s hold never looked in serious doubt. Still, the result points to some wider trends in how people are voting.
The result
Labour’s Sagal Abdi-Wali won with 45.2% of the vote, down 3.7 points on the party’s 2024 general election share. Abdi-Wali leads Camden Council and is well known in local politics.
Green Party leader Zack Polanski came second with 32.8%, up 22.4 points on the Greens’ 2024 result.
The constituency
Holborn and St Pancras is one of the smallest constituencies in the country by area, but one of the most varied. It is home to major employers such as Google and includes some very wealthy neighbourhoods. It also has pockets of severe deprivation. Few seats hold such sharp contrasts in so small a space.
The battle for the left
This was always going to be a contest between Labour and the Greens, who did particularly well in this part of London at the May local elections.
Labour will be pleased. By-elections are usually hard for governing parties, and losing less than four points against a 2024 result won by the then Leader of the Opposition is a strong showing. More significant is who Labour appears to have held. In a seat like this, the result suggests the party has won back progressive voters on its left flank, voters who looked ready to drift to the Greens under Starmer. If Labour under Burnham can keep them, the national implications are hard to overstate.
The Greens will be disappointed not to have run Labour closer. Given the turbulence of recent weeks, though, they did at least avoid a collapse in their vote.
That turbulence centres on the party’s conference, which was dominated by a motion on Zionism. Passed by 1,022 votes to 813, it described Zionism as an “ethno-nationalist” project and backed a single Palestinian state covering all of historic Palestine. Such a state would include the territory of Israel, established in 1948, and critics have argued that the motion therefore calls Israel’s right to exist into question.
Polanski did not vote on the motion, but has said he would not have backed the motion as worded. Other senior Greens have been more outspoken. Former leader Caroline Lucas called it an “oversimplification”, warning that “Zionism means different things to different people” and that refusing “to accept the complexities” was leaving many Jewish members “to feel scared”.
After failing to take the seat, Polanski faces questions about his leadership. He insists he is staying, but there are growing signs that the Green surge under his leadership may be losing momentum.
The battle for the right
No party of the right was ever going to win Holborn and St Pancras. The real contest was for third place between the Conservatives, Reform UK and Restore Britain. The Conservatives took it, the first time they have beaten Reform UK in an English by-election since the 2024 general election. Just as notable, Restore Britain won almost half as many votes as Reform. It is hard for a party dubbed the most successful election winning machine to be happy with a third-place result coming from just 1,922 votes. However, their relative performance compared to Reform UK and Restore Britain indicates that under Kemi Badenoch some traditional Conservatives may be returning to the party.