As ever, among all the noise triggered by Labour holding the seat of Holborn and St Pancras, the most plain-spoken and undeniable analysis was provided by that sage and national treasure John Curtice, of Strathclyde University. The result, he said, echoed national opinion polls and reflected two undeniable facts: that the Greens are in need of a period of contrition and reflection, and Labour ought to be slightly less than ecstatic. Andy Burnham’s party, with a majority of 3,364, he said, showed they “are in a much better position than they were six months ago, but still not as popular as they were in 2025”.
The Greens, meanwhile, remain “a more significant player than historically they have ever been”, but have lost much of the ground they gained during Zack Polanski’s first year as leader, when the serial failures of the local MP – one Keir Starmer – provided him and his party with such a glorious succession of political opportunities. Do not forget: the Greens’ success earlier this year in Gorton and Denton played a massive part in Starmer eventually leaving the political stage, and the man he barred from being the Labour candidate snatching his job. Publicly, Polanski seems largely unrepentant about the “Zionism is racism” motion passed at his party conference, and confident he can resume where he left off.
But his party’s claim that it tripled its previous vote share in the seat is very specious indeed: as the pollster Peter Kellner puts it, “the leftwing vote two years ago was divided between the Greens’ 10.4% and an independent, Andrew Feinstein’s, 18.9%. Together, they won 29.3%.” The true increase in the leftwing anti-Labour vote, therefore, is only 3.5 percentage points, and Polanski has thus taken such a significant blow that his experience of the next few weeks and months could be very choppy indeed. Over the last week, I spent two days in the constituency, filming another episode of the Guardian’s Anywhere But Westminster video series, and got a deep sense that our politics remains in a state of unpredictable flux.
So many people and the conversations we had come to mind. The young people of colour in the pinched neighbourhood of Somers Town – the urban village right next to Euston station – who were all voting Green, and talked of Gaza and the impossibility of living in our capital. The woman in upmarket Primrose Hill who told us she no longer told people she was Jewish for fear of instant uproar and upbraiding about Israel, a country she had last visited 15 long years ago.
But most of all, a 24-year-old trainee teacher called Tom, who reluctantly still lives with his parents, and has no idea how he is going to hold down a job in his home city. He had once been an enthusiastic Green member and activist, he told me, and had every intention of voting for them, until the Zionism motion suggested a party perfectly happy to inflame the UK’s sense of division and polarisation. He decided to switch to Labour.
The searing summer should have provided the Greens with another boost, and a real chance of another byelection win. Polanski – who endorsed the idea that Zionism is a form of racism eight days before his party’s conference began – looks not just morally questionable, but distinctly weak: one central bit of symbolism in this whole affair, let us not forget, was his absence from the Zionism debate and vote at his party conference. And so to a geographical jump to a few other parts of the country.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
