Labour is starting to win back voters on the left who became disillusioned under Keir Starmer’s leadership, the party’s deputy leader has claimed after it saw off Zack Polanski and the Greens to win the Holborn and St Pancras byelection.
Labour’s Sagal Abdi-Wali took 45% of a relatively low turnout to keep Starmer’s old north London seat for the party, pushing Polanski, who had stood for the party he leads, into second place on 33%.
While the result was broadly as predicted, Labour strategists were buoyed up by the party’s relatively straightforward route to victory in a diverse inner-city area of the sort the Greens have been targeting with recent success.
The result “sends a clear message to those voters who lost faith in Labour in recent years”, said Lucy Powell, who called last month for the party to unite progressive voters under Andy Burnham if it wants to win the next election.
After the byelection win, she told the Guardian: “We hear you, we’ve listened and we know we needed to be clearer about what we stand for and what type of country we want to see, proudly putting our values centre stage. We’re delighted so many of you are backing us once again.”
The byelection came after the Green party voted at their conference last weekend to adopt a hugely controversial policy equating Zionism with racism, and saying Israel should be replaced with a single Palestinian state.
Polanski has been criticised for showing minimal leadership on the most toxic internal debate the Greens have faced in living memory, with the chair of Jewish Greens saying he should resign.
The byelection, called after Starmer resigned his Commons seat shortly after he was ousted by Burnham, saw a low turnout of 38.7%, possibly due to the widespread predictions that Labour was set to win, despite a major campaigning effort from the Greens.
The turnout also suggests Burnham could still face a battle to engage some voters in urban areas, particularly London, where the Greens took control of three councils in May’s local elections.
In an emotional victory speech, Abdi-Wali, a former child refugee who came to the UK from Somalia in the 1990s, hit out at “those who seek to divide us”, in what appeared to be a response to Reform UK’s Zia Yusuf, who suggested she was not British shortly after the byelection was called.
“I hope this moment says something about who gets to belong,” she said. “For people who look like me, I hope they see themselves reflected in this place and know that their path too belongs here. This is Camden, and this is Britain.”
Responding to the defeat, Polanski, who leads the Greens in England and Wales, said that while the result showed his party remained a major threat to Labour, many voters had told him they wanted to “give Andy Burnham a chance”.
It was the Greens’ second best-ever byelection result, more evidence of the party’s increased prominence and campaigning power since Polanski became leader 13 months ago.
The best came in February, when the Greens took an equally safe Labour seat, Gorton and Denton in Greater Manchester, in a major upset that weakened Starmer’s position. Around the same time, the Greens peaked at 21% in national polling, above Labour. They are now about 11%, more than 15 points behind Burnham’s party.
Polanski’s position has come under scrutiny since the Zionism motion was passed, with critics accusing him of abdicating leadership after he missed the debate to campaign in the byelection, giving no clear message about whether or not he backed it.
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In interviews after the byelection loss, Polanski said he would have voted against the motion had he attended, given that two amendments he supported, both saying any future structure of a Palestinian state should be decided by Palestinians rather than a one-state system being imposed, were voted down.
On Friday, Vivien Lichtenstein, chair of Jewish Greens, said Polanski, who is Jewish, made a “big mistake” by avoiding the vote. Asked if he should continue in his role, she told Times Radio: “No, I think he should resign.”
However, other members of Jewish Greens said Lichtenstein’s comments did not reflect the majority view in the group, and that a vote of no confidence in her had been tabled.
Speaking shortly before the byelection result was announced, Caroline Lucas, the Greens’ former leader and first MP, said Polanski “should have been there and he should have voted”.
Speaking to Newsnight, she said: “I would have hoped that he would have really been a very strong critic of this motion, because the motion was flawed from top to bottom in my view. It’s dangerous, it’s divisive, it tries to have a singular definition of Zionism when we know that there are many.”
Asked if Polanski should stand down, Lucas did not definitively say he should remain as leader: “I think let’s just see what happens in the … coming days and weeks.”
There is no formal mechanism for ejecting a leader of the Greens. However, they are re-elected every two years, meaning Polanski, who took over in September 2025, will have to go before party members again in less than a year.
