Labour has held on to Sir Keir Starmer’s old seat in the Holborn and St Pancras by-election, beating the leftwing Green leader Zack Polanski, whose leadership is now likely to come under further pressure.
Labour’s candidate Sagal Abdi-Wali won the north London seat with 45 per cent of the vote to Polanski’s 33 per cent on a low turnout.
The result is a boost for Prime Minister Andy Burnham and evidence that the party has stemmed the flow of voters on the left who had been drifting to the Greens.
It is also a blow to Polanski, who was already facing severe criticism for failing to oppose an anti-Zionism motion at the party’s conference this month.
He insisted that he would “of course” carry on as leader of the Greens, arguing that the party had increased its share of the vote compared with the 2024 general election, when Starmer led Labour back to power.
He had sought to use the by-election to attack Labour’s policy on Gaza, housing and North Sea oil and gas exploration.
“Of course I wanted to win, no one runs in an election to lose,” Polanski told the BBC, adding that “so many people on the doorstep told me that they want to give Andy Burnham a chance. Well, he has got a chance now, let’s see what he does with it.”
Bridget Phillipson, Labour’s chair, said the result showed voters were “backing Labour’s message of hope”.
Polanski’s loss is likely to intensify questions over his leadership and whether he can turn the Greens around, after failing to recreate the Greens’ shock victory over Labour at the Gorton and Denton by-election in February.
In the spring the Greens were almost level with Labour in the polls, but have slumped since Burnham took power in July. Labour is now on 27 per cent versus 11 per cent for the Greens.
Sagal Abdi-Wali retains the Holborn and St Pancras seat for Labour
Meanwhile, the “Zionism is Racism” motion, approved by Green members at the party conference in Brighton on Sunday, has been heavily criticised by UK Jewish groups for stoking antisemitism.
Two Green councillors have quit the party, while senior Greens have described the motion as “dangerous” and “divisive”.
Polanski avoided voting on the motion, which calls for a single Palestinian state to replace Israel. Senior figures in the party have privately criticised his inability to control the Greens’ more radical activists.
Former party leader Caroline Lucas declined to back Polanski when asked if he should stand down on Thursday, telling the BBC’s Newsnight she was “sure” he would face additional criticism once the by-election was over.
“I think it was a mistake not to show leadership on this and I think it was a mistake not to be there to vote,” Lucas said.
Polanski said explicitly for the first time on Friday morning that he “would have voted against the motion” but declined to say on the BBC Today programme whether he supported Israel’s right to exist.
He indicated, however, that he was prepared to fight to amend the motion “at the earliest possible moment” to allow for the possibility of a two-state solution.
That is likely to lead to a fight with the most ardent pro-Palestinian activists in the party and create a possible split among the Greens’ leadership. At the weekend members rejected a similar amendment to the one proposed by Polanski on Friday.
Co-deputy leader Mothin Ali, a councillor in Leeds, voted in favour of the “Zionism is Racism” motion on Sunday even as four of the party’s five MPs opposed it.
Polanski faces a leadership vote next summer under the party’s rules.
Under him, Green Party membership has more than tripled to more than 200,000, with many new members motivated by the party’s critical stance on Israel’s conduct in the war in Gaza.
Longstanding Green members are concerned, however, that the party’s traditional environmental message risks being crowded out.
The Holborn and St Pancras seat became vacant after Starmer stepped down as an MP following his resignation as prime minister.
On Friday, Green officials highlighted that the party’s vote share tripled from 10.4 per cent to 32.8 per cent compared with that received in the 2024 general election. But Andrew Feinstein, an independent leftwinger who received 19 per cent in 2024, did not stand in Thursday’s by-election, allowing the Greens to consolidate the hard-left vote.
Green activists had flooded into the area, and Polanski even encouraged members to cancel tickets to the party conference last weekend to join him in campaigning.
Abdi-Wali, a Somalia-born refugee and leader of Camden Council, will enter Westminster when parliament returns from recess on Monday.
She said it was an “extraordinary honour” to become the first female MP for the constituency. “People need to believe that politics can make their lives better,” she said.