Holborn and St Pancras Votes in Starmer’s Old Seat
Polls opened at seven this morning and close at ten tonight, when counting begins. Fifteen candidates are standing for the seat Keir Starmer vacated after being forced out as prime minister by his own MPs in July. Labour’s Sagal Abdi-Wali is defending a majority of 11,500 against the Green leader Zack Polanski.
The contest tests two things at once. For Labour it is whether Andy Burnham’s government can hold inner-city seats against a party that won several London councils in May; a narrow win would end the honeymoon rather than confirm it. For the Greens it is whether Mr Polanski can still take votes from Labour’s left after his party voted to define Zionism as racism, a policy four of his five MPs condemned and on which he has not said how he voted. The arithmetic has moved a long way in eight months. After February’s Gorton and Denton by-election YouGov briefly put the Greens above Labour on 21%; the most recent equivalent poll has them on 11%, sixteen points behind. Sir Keir took nearly 28,000 votes in 2019 and 11,500 in 2024. The seat is young and international: roughly 45% of constituents were born overseas and 48% are aged between eighteen and thirty-four. Ms Abdi-Wali, 42, has led Camden council since May and arrived in London in the early 1990s speaking no English, having fled Somalia with her mother and four brothers. Mr Polanski calls it “looking close” and asks whether it is “time for a Green voice for Camden to push Labour to do better” on rent controls and water ownership. Voters need photo identification, and about thirty polling stations are open in churches and community centres.