This vote was a test not just of Burnham’s bounce but also his breadth: after seeing off Reform in Makerfield in the victory that paved the way for him to become prime minister, Labour has shored up its left flank too after the prime minister delivered an unapologetically left wing prospectus to his party conference in Liverpool just a few weeks ago.
Sagal Abdi-Walim, who arrived in the UK as a child refugee from Somalia, said her victory was “deeply personal”, telling supporters: “I hope this moment also says something about who gets to belong … I came here as a child and this place gave me so much.”
Speaking to broadcasters after the declaration, Polanski stayed upbeat, insisting voters had been excited about Green policies, but conceding: “So many people on the doorstep told me they wanted to give Andy Burnham a chance – let’s see what he does with it.”
Guardian reporter Sammy Gecsoyler, who was at the count in Camden council offices, described a fairly “low energy” affair, where it looked certain from early on in the night that Labour had come through.
It’s worth reflecting that the turnout here was nothing like it was in Makerfield – or in Gorton and Denton in February, where the Green’s Hannah Spencer pushed Labour into third place. Turnout yesterday was 38.7%, the lowest for any byelection held in England during this parliament and 15.4% down from 2024.
A constituency of contradictions
The battle in Starmer’s former seat may have seemed fairly quiet from a distance, but not for those that live there. Guardian reporter Tobi Thomas, for example, estimates she’s had Green canvassers on her Camden doorstep four times a week since the start of September.
She predicted a Labour win: “A lot of my neighbours are lifelong Labour supporters.” But she also observed the Greens were campaigning hard, “with talking points on the environment and Gaza.”
As Tobi points out, Holborn and St Pancras is a wildly mixed constituency. It takes in everyone from media execs in their Primrose Hill mansions, to the Euston school leaders facing falling pupil numbers due to a lack of family council housing.
Across the London constituency, 43% of people live in social housing, almost half are aged between 18 and 34, and around the same number were born abroad. Even before her selection as a candidate, Reform spokesperson for home affairs Zia Yusuf was keen to point out that Sagal Abdi-Wali happens to have been born in Somalia, in a dog whistle post on X that was later condemned as “straightforward racism” by Labour. While Reform has no foothold in the area, Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee – who lives in the constituency too – wondered if attacks like this might galvanise wavering Labour supporters otherwise tempted by the Greens.
Polanski’s pitch has been that a vote for the Greens is a protest vote – but one with real power. According to analysis by Politico, the party has spent nearly £5,000 pushing Meta ads that promise a Green win would “keep the government in check”.
Abdi-Wali, who says that she was spurred to join the Labour party in 2015 due to a the visible rise in homelessness in King’s Cross, has focused squarely on local issues in her campaign.
But this local emphasis sits in tension with national scrutiny of the party. Out on the doorstep with Abdi-Wali in a social housing estate, Polly Toynbee described how warmly the Labour candidate was recognised for her community work. “She takes notes of people’s problems, from housing repairs to e-bikes blocking the road, her local campaign matching Burnham’s localism,” Polly wrote. “But we also meet a college lecturer, who had a run-in with their employer over Gaza, who will ‘never vote Labour again’.”
Is Labour’s identity crisis over?
It’s true that Gaza led many Labour voters to go Green in the English council elections earlier this year. Two years earlier, in Holborn and St Pancras, a constituency with a 20% Muslim population, Starmer’s majority fell from 27,763 to 11,572, and an independent candidate who described him as “terrible on Gaza” came in second with 18.9% of the vote.
This morning’s results will now be scrutinised to assess the impact of Burnham’s significant shift of position. The new prime minister has apologised for Labour’s initial response to Israel’s military action in Gaza, saying that the UK was too slow to call for a ceasefire. More recently, foreign secretary Ed Miliband announced sanctions on trade with illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank (but, Labour is still yet to act on the proscription of Palestine Action).
Speaking on the BBC earlier this morning, polling expert John Curtice said that the result largely reflected shifts in national polls, with the Greens “notably weaker” than in the spring, when they were at an historic high of close to 20%.
But he warned: “45% of the vote is four points down on what Keir Starmer got in 2024. Bear in mind that the vote for Starmer fell precipitously in 2024. And compared with what Labour was getting in this constituency in 2019 or 2017, Labour’s vote is still well down.”
Curtice’s up-sum was that Labour are in a much better position than they were six months ago, but still not as popular as they were in 2024. Calling a general election now – which, to be fair, Burnham ruled out before Labour conference – would still be “an extremely risky project for them”, Curtice said. The results also show the Greens “are more significant players than they have ever been”, though they have lost a significant portion of the ground the gained during the early months of Polanski’s leadership.
Meanwhile, the snap analysis from Peter Kellner, the former head of YouGov, was that Labour had defied its “truly dreadful record defending its own seats when it is in government and faces a by-election challenge from the left”.
Most importantly, the result confirms Burnham’s ability to hold together Labour’s broad coalition: from the older, anti-immigration, Eurosceptic voters that made up a large proportion of voters in the Makerfield byelection, to the comparatively younger, more diverse and progressive left-leaning constituents of Holborn and St Pancras. Some might say this result cements a glorious union of north with south, but, I’ll say it for the umpteenth time: Makerfield is not in the north, it’s in the middle.
Is the grass still Greener?
At this point, it feels a bit rude to mention Gorton and Denton again. In politics-time, it might feel like a century ago now, but reporter Matthew Pearce tells me that the Greens were still celebrating it at their conference last weekend.
It was a “sliding doors” moment for Labour, Matthew says, and many Green strategists see Polanski’s early success as a direct cause of Starmer’s downfall – and Burnham’s subsequent ascension.
“It’s clear Polanski played a role,” says Matthew, “but the question now is whether that role will diminish because of Labour’s new direction.”
Polanski has said from the outset of his campaign to be an MP that he would remain as Green party leader even if he lost – so take any early morning pundit speculation with a heavy salting. That said, former Green leader Caroline Lucas was quick out the traps shortly after the polls closed, saying he made a “mistake not to show leadership” over the Zionism policy vote.
According to Matthew, the Greens are now focused on the impact of the New Labour prime minister. “In his conference speech, Burnham addressed so many issues that the Greens have been using to distinguish themselves from Labour,” he explains.
When Polanski became leader he said many times he ultimately wanted the Greens to replace Labour. But in his speech at conference, he returned to a new phrasing: “Vote Green, watch Labour move”.
“They know they have to adapt to the new political spectrum,” says Matthew.
Sagal Abdi-Wali, the Labour party candidate, campaigned on local issues. Photograph: James Veysey/Shutterstock
