Labour's Sagal Abdi-Wali has won the Holborn and St Pancras by-election, taking the seat vacated by Sir Keir Starmer with 45.17% of the vote. Green Party leader Zack Polanski finished second, lifting his party's share by more than 22 points, but told Sky News he has no intention of resigning despite failing to take the seat himself.
A defeat Polanski frames as progress
Asked directly whether he would step down, Polanski was unequivocal: "Yes absolutely. That is what leaders do" - a phrasing that read as a statement of intent to remain, not a resignation. He rejected the suggestion that contesting the seat had been a misstep, pointing instead to the platform it gave him to campaign on rent controls, the climate crisis and the nationalisation of Thames Water. The scale of the swing toward the Greens - a jump of more than 22 percentage points on the previous result - gives him grounds to argue the campaign strengthened rather than damaged his position, even in defeat.
Abdi-Wali's win and the tone of the campaign
Abdi-Wali, leader of Camden Council and the borough's first black female leader, becomes the new MP after a campaign she says centred on tackling homelessness and bringing Thames Water into public ownership. She arrived in the UK as a child refugee from Somalia, a biography that became a flashpoint during the contest after Reform UK's Zia Yusuf questioned her candidacy by referencing her country of birth - remarks condemned as racist by senior Labour figures including business secretary Jonathan Reynolds. In her victory speech, Abdi-Wali said her win represented "winning not by making people afraid of each other, but by bringing people together," framing diversity as a civic strength rather than a liability.
The full result and what it signals
The result confirms Labour's hold on a seat it has controlled for decades, but the Green surge and Reform UK's continued presence point to a fragmenting opposition landscape in inner-London contests.
- Sagal Abdi-Wali (Labour): 12,292 votes, 45.17% (-3.75%)
- Zack Polanski (Green): 8,928 votes, 32.81% (+22.37%)
- Ewan Cameron (Conservative): 1,922 votes, 7.06% (-0.13%)
- Peter Newman (Reform UK): 1,612 votes, 5.92% (-0.22%)
- Patrick Stillman (Liberal Democrat): 924 votes, 3.40% (-2.40%)
The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats both saw their vote shares erode, underscoring how the contest increasingly became a two-way fight between Labour and the Greens in this particular constituency.
The conference motion shadowing Polanski's result
Polanski's post-election comments were overshadowed by questions about a motion passed at the Green Party's conference describing Zionism as racism. He told broadcasters he grew up in a Zionist household but has since come to view the characterisation of the region as "a land without people" as false, describing events in Gaza as "an ongoing genocide." Pressed on whether the motion risked conflating anti-Semitism with criticism of Israeli state policy, he said the two must not be blurred, arguing that doing so "makes us less safe" for Jewish communities. He declined to back a specific resolution - such as a two-state solution - saying instead that any state arrangement should guarantee equal rights regardless of faith, based on international human rights law rather than Green Party prescription. The remarks illustrate the tightrope facing a leader seeking to broaden his party's appeal nationally while managing an internal base that passed a contentious and legally loaded motion at conference.