Recap of Holborn and St Pancras by-election

Image Credit: Lauren Hurley via Flickr

Labour have just passed their most recent political test with flying colours, defending the Holborn and St Pancras constituency with a comfortable 45.2% voter share for Sagal Abdi-Wali. On paper it doesn’t sound extremely impressive: retaining a constituency formerly held by your last leader which has also been overwhelmingly Labour since its creation should be simple. But the result quietly says a lot. The current mood in the air towards the national political situation is changing.

The positive outcome for Labour means that Burnham can now comfortably boast that his ideas reach people in both Reform-leaning areas, like Makerfield, and the progressive, urbanised districts such as Holborn and St Pancras.

The Greens, however, ought to be disappointed – this was Polanski’s big gamble to get himself in The Commons as party leader. Questions have begun to float around whether his populist left strategy is still attractive, or if he should remain as party leader at all, following this outcome paired with his absent vote over the controversial Green Party conference motion that defined Zionism as a form of racism. 

Hope still remains for Polanski: The Greens won just under 33% of the vote, which was well above anyone else below them. Furthermore, their vote share rose by a sharp 22% in comparison to the 2024 general election, and it’s their second-best by-election result on record. They turned this historically safe seat into a marginal one. They have positives to take away from this, with Polanski calling it “the foundation we’re looking to build on”.