Labour deputy leader confident of winning Holborn and St Pancras by-election against Greens

LIVERPOOL, England — Labour’s deputy leader has said she is “confident” her party will win the upcoming crunch by-election in the north London seat of Holborn and St Pancras — seeing off a fierce challenge from the Green Party.

Speaking at The POLITICO Pub at Labour’s annual conference in Liverpool, Lucy Powell said it is “unlikely” Green Leader Zack Polanski will win the seat. Powell previously led Labour’s unsuccessful campaign in Gorton and Denton, where her party finished third behind the Greens and Reform.

Polanski has acknowledged that he is the “underdog” in Holborn and St Pancras, but insisted that the Green Party can defy expectations and take the historically-safe Labour seat vacated by former prime minister Keir Starmer, who has quit parliament.

The Greens made sweeping gains in May’s local elections, largely at the expense of Labour. The majority were concentrated in London, where the party now controls six councils.

Powell told conference attendees the by-election is “important” for Labour but argued the party’s candidate, Sagal Abdi-Wali, is the best choice “by country mile.” She said the Green Party has “underestimated” Abdi-Wali’s campaign.

“Although I did say that about Gordon and Denton,” she added.

She described Abdi-Wali as “a community champion, community leader” and said there was “real positivity about her campaign” on the ground.

Powell said many Labour voters who left the party for the Greens during Starmer’s premiership were giving the party “a second look” under Andy Burnham.

But she acknowledged the party’s losses to the Greens are not confined to the U.K.’s middle classes. “We’ve lost more working-class voters to the Greens than we have lost middle-class voters to the Greens,” Powell told the conference.

Powell said her party needs to win back progressive, center-left voters from the Greens who are “fed up with the status quo” — but stopped short of endorsing working with Polanski’s party after the next election.

The Greens won four parliamentary seats at the 2024 election – Bristol Central, North Herefordshire, Waveney Valley and Brighton Pavilion.

The party subsequently gained a fifth MP through a by-election victory in Gorton and Denton earlier this year.

During the interview with POLITICO, Powell accused Nigel Farage’s right-wing Reform UK of suggesting that Abdi-Wali “has got no right to stand as an MP because she’s a refugee” and was “born in another country.”

Reform’s home affairs spokesperson, Zia Yusuf, has previously criticized Abdi-Wali’s candidacy, pointing out that she was born in Somalia.

Powell said many voters in Holborn and St Pancras would back Labour to “reject that notion and reject that kind of politics.”