Zack Polanski enters Holborn and St Pancras byelection race
Zack Polanski will seek the Green nomination after Keir Starmer left the Commons, reopening representation for Holborn and St Pancras voters.
Holborn and St Pancras voters face a new contest for their MP after Keir Starmer left the Commons, with Zack Polanski seeking the Green Party nomination.
The Zack Polanski byelection bid is not yet a candidacy: local Green members must choose their candidate before any formal election field is set. Polanski, the Green Party leader and a London Assembly member, told the Camden New Journal he intends to seek their backing.
He has put the contest in material terms, saying Labour had too often stood up for corporations and big money, while he would stand up for people struggling with bills. That is the argument now being put before a constituency where housing costs and affordability will matter more than any Westminster career move.
What the Zack Polanski byelection bid means
The vacancy follows Starmer’s departure from Parliament on 1 September, after 11 years as the seat’s MP. He had resigned as prime minister on 20 July, then said it was time to pass the baton to a successor.
Labour begins with a substantial record in the constituency. Starmer won 18,884 votes in 2024, or 48.9%, with an 11,572-vote majority over independent Andrew Feinstein. Feinstein took 18.9%, while the Green candidate David Stansell won 10.4%.
Those figures are a warning against treating the contest as settled. Feinstein has called for progressive forces to unite, but has not said he will not stand, and there is no evidence that his 2024 voters would transfer as one bloc to a Green candidate.
There is, however, a local Green base for Polanski to appeal to. Greens won all three seats in Holborn and Covent Garden at May’s council elections, while Labour and the Camden People’s Alliance won the seats in St Pancras and Somers Town. The constituency is not one political block.
No official polling date, election notice or final list of candidates has yet been published. First, Green members must decide whether Polanski is their candidate; then Labour, independents and other parties will make their choices. Voters who went 11 years with the same MP will decide whose promises on bills, homes and representation carry weight.
