Labour's Sagal Abdi-Wali won the Holborn and St Pancras byelection with 45% of the vote, keeping what was Keir Starmer's seat after he resigned his Commons seat following his ouster by Andy Burnham. Green leader Zack Polanski took 33%, making it the Greens' second-best byelection result ever. Turnout was 38.7%. Labour deputy leader Lucy Powell framed the result as proof the party is winning back disillusioned left-wing voters under Burnham's leadership. That claim deserves scrutiny. The win came in a seat Labour was always expected to hold, against a Green party in the middle of the most toxic internal crisis in its modern history — a conference vote equating Zionism with racism and calling for Israel's replacement with a single Palestinian state. Polanski's leadership has been openly questioned since that motion passed. He missed the debate to campaign in the byelection, then told interviewers afterward he would have voted against it. Caroline Lucas, the Greens' former leader and first MP, said the motion was "flawed from top to bottom" and that Polanski "should have been there." Vivien Lichtenstein, chair of Jewish Greens, called for his resignation. A counter-motion of no confidence in Lichtenstein has been tabled, suggesting the party's internal fracture runs deep. The context matters for reading Labour's result. Green polling has dropped from a peak of 21% nationally — above Labour at the time — to roughly 11%, more than 15 points behind Burnham's party. That collapse tracks the Zionism controversy and the Greens' inability to manage it, not a surge in Labour's appeal. Polanski himself acknowledged voters told him they wanted to "give Andy Burnham a chance," a softer endorsement than Labour's rhetoric implies. Abdi-Wali's victory speech struck a different note from the party's strategic messaging. A former child refugee from Somalia, she directly addressed Reform UK's Zia Yusuf, who had questioned whether she was British. "I hope this moment says something about who gets to belong," she said. That personal resonance may matter more to Labour's urban coalition-building than any scorecard against the Greens. The structural question remains: can Labour sustain engagement in urban seats where turnout was barely above a third? The Greens took control of three London councils in May's local elections. A byelection won on low turnout against a self-destructing opponent is not the same as a durable realignment. Burnham's team knows this — Powell's own call last month for uniting progressive voters under Burnham acknowledged the fragility. Polanski faces re-election within a year under Green party rules, with no formal mechanism to remove him before then. Whether the Greens stabilize or fracture further will shape Labour's left flank more than anything Labour itself does in the near term.
