In a boost for Andy Burnham, Sagal Abdi-Wali will succeed Sir Keir Starmer in the north London seat
Daily Telegraph 09/10/26
The Labour Party has held onto Holborn and St Pancras in a by-election boost for Andy Burnham’s premiership.
Sagal Abdi-Wali, the Labour candidate, beat Zack Polanski, the Green Party leader, by 3,364 votes in Sir Keir Starmer’s former constituency.
After the defeat, Mr Polanski insisted he would not resign as leader, saying the contest had been “an opportunity to present Green Party values”.
He is under mounting internal pressure over his leadership after the Greens lost ground in the polls and activists backed a motion at the annual party conference declaring “Zionism is racism”.
Ms Abdi-Wali won with 45 per cent of the vote compared with the Green Party leader’s 32.7 per cent. Turnout was 38.8 per cent, down from 54.1 per cent at the 2024 general election. The Conservatives were a distant third on 1,922 votes with Reform UK fourth on 1,612.
Ms Abdi-Wali, a former Somali child refugee who has run Camden council since May, said she was honoured to be elected in a “deeply personal” victory.
The Telegraph revealed last week that Andrew Feinstein, a Left-wing independent candidate, had been asked to stand as the Green Party candidate in the by-election before Mr Polanski chose to fight the north London seat.
In 2024, Mr Feinstein came second to Sir Keir in Holborn and St Pancras with almost 19 per cent of the vote. Much of his support is thought to have gone to Mr Polanski.
The Green Party leader was banned from Israel on Sunday after the Greens passed a motion at the annual party conference in Brighton claiming that Zionism is racist.
Sir Ephraim Mirvis, the Chief Rabbi, condemned the motion as “poisonous anti-Semitism” which represented a “threat to British Jews and to Britain”.
After the by-election result, Mr Polanski refused to say whether he believed Zionism was racist but said the “displacement of the Palestinian people, the genocide, is clearly racist”.
A Green Party spokesman hailed the by-election as an “incredible result” and highlighted the “huge swing in one of Labour’s safest seats” to the party.
However, Caroline Lucas, the former Green Party leader, told BBC’s Newsnight programme on Thursday that Mr Polanski had made a “mistake” in failing to speak out against the Zionism is racism motion, which is now official party policy.
She said she “would have hoped he would have been a very strong critic of this motion”, which was not supported by the Green Party MPs but did win the backing of Mothin Ali, the deputy leader.
The by-election was triggered by the resignation of Sir Keir, who announced that he would stand down as an MP shortly after leaving Downing Street in July.
Ms Abdi-Wali said her victory “says something about who gets to belong”, after repeated comments about her heritage during the campaign.
Zia Yusuf, the Reform UK home affairs spokesman, had said on X that Ms Abdi-Wali was “born in Somalia” and had been “foisted” on the people of Holborn.
Ms Abdi-Wali’s parents came to Britain from Somalia in the early 1990s. The new Labour MP grew up in Camden and is a practising Muslim who wears a hijab.
In her victory speech at the count, Ms Abdi-Wali said: “For people who look like me, I hope they see themselves reflected in this place and know that their path too belongs here.”
Holborn and St Pancras has been a safe Labour seat since 1983. Ms Abdi-Wali won with 12,292 votes to Mr Polanski’s 8,928.
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