Can Polanski Break Labour’s Hold on Holborn?
Can Polanski Break Labour’s Hold on Holborn?
Zack Polanski sees Keir Starmer’s departure as an opening for a sharper Green challenge to Labour, while Labour’s long record in Holborn and St Pancras suggests that converting protest support into victory will be difficult.
The by-election will test whether a constituency represented by Labour since 1983 is ready to shift leftward to the Greens, or whether Labour’s entrenched local base can withstand a high-profile challenge.
Polanski, the Green Party leader and a London Assembly member, has said he intends to seek the party’s nomination for the seat. Presenting himself as a local candidate and an alternative to party discipline, he said he had “lived and worked in this community over many years” and was eager to represent it in Parliament.
His argument is explicitly economic and anti-establishment. Polanski says Labour has too often backed “corporations and big money,” while he would represent residents facing rising living costs. He describes the contest as “a clear fight between Labour and the Green Party” and says a Green victory would make him London’s first Green MP.
Labour, however, starts with a much stronger electoral record than the Green rhetoric alone suggests. Starmer won 48.9% of the vote in 2024, compared with 18.9% for independent Andrew Feinstein and 10.4% for the Greens. Labour has held the seat continuously since its creation, and has returned only two MPs: Frank Dobson and Starmer. The Greens can point to 11 Camden council seats won in May, including seven within the parliamentary constituency, as evidence of a growing local foothold.
Other political voices have framed the contest differently. Rupert Lowe argued on X that the area’s demographics mean it cannot be won by a party identified with mass deportation policies, an assessment focused on the limits of that electoral message rather than the Green-Labour contest itself. The by-election date has not yet been set, and both parties are still selecting their candidates.
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