Labour has comfortably won the Holborn and St Pancras by-election with 45 per cent of the vote, leaving Zack Polanski a distant second on 32.7 per cent. In the contest caused by Sir Keir Starmer’s decision to quit the House of Commons, Sagal Abdi-Wali retained much of her party’s vote, down only four points from the party’s 2024 triumph. The result will further bolster Andy Burnham’s credentials, cheer Labour activists after his rousing conference speech and exacerbate the existing wounds within the Green party about the future of Polanski’s leadership.

It was just five weeks’ ago that Starmer resigned – but he has already been totally airbrushed out of history by his local party. Abdi-Wali ran a campaign focused on three issues: homelessness, water companies and opportunities for young people around the theme of ‘the Camden way’. The first two neatly dovetailed with Burnham’s own national priorities. Campaigners were cheered by the Prime Minister’s threats to take Thames Water into public ownership, with many local residents affected in August by one of the company’s burst water mains. Unsurprisingly, Starmer did not feature on any Labour literature, with the party preferring to talk about its record in local government – something that worked well in the May........

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