Labour defends Keir Starmer's seat. Few governments kept such seats this early.

What happened

Labour members in Holborn and St Pancras selected Sagal Abdi-Wali, the leader of Camden council, as the party’s candidate for the byelection on 8 October in the north London seat vacated by Keir Starmer.

Labour members chose Sagal Abdi-Wali on Wednesday to defend Holborn and St Pancras at the byelection on 8 October. She has led Camden council since May and has been a councillor since 2022.

The seat became empty when Keir Starmer, who resigned as prime minister earlier this year, said on 1 September that he was standing down as an MP. So a party in government is defending a seat its own former leader has just left.

Keir Starmer took 48.9% of the vote here in 2024. Next came the left-wing independent Andrew Feinstein on 18.9%, the Greens on 10.4%, the Conservatives on 7.2%, Reform UK on 6.1% and the Liberal Democrats on 5.8%.

Labour has won the seat at every election since it was created in 1983 and has never taken less than 40% there. But its winning margin more than halved in 2024, from nearly 28,000 votes to about 11,500.

The main challenge comes from the Greens. Their leader, Zack Polanski, is seeking to be their candidate against the Camden councillor Hamza Chowdhury, with a decision due this month. Andrew Feinstein has said he will not stand, so the Camden People’s Alliance is likely to back the Greens.

Green organisers say they will repeat the campaign that won Gorton and Denton in February, where Labour had a majority of more than 13,000.

Sources: Guardian (2), BBC (2)

The Pattern

We looked at byelections since 2010 in seats the governing party had won at the last general election, in the first three years of a parliament. This one comes 26 months into the parliament elected in 2024. We show the last eight. The governing party kept two of them.

The Read

History leans against Labour. Governing parties kept only two of the last eight seats like this one. In February Gorton and Denton, a Labour seat won with more than 50% in 2024, fell to the Greens, a party with a handful of MPs, and the Greens say they are running the same campaign here. Even the seats that were kept cost a lot. The Conservatives kept Old Bexley but lost three quarters of their majority, and the same drop here, on 11,500, would leave under 3,000.

The record is weaker than it looks, because the two seats that were kept are the closest to this contest. Both came in the middle of a parliament, in seats the party had owned for decades. In Makerfield in June, Labour, with a candidate voters already knew, won a bigger share than in 2024. Labour has never taken less than 40% in Holborn and St Pancras since 1983. The government also has a new prime minister, and the Guardian reports that Labour’s polling has improved while Zack Polanski’s has slipped.

The case for a Labour loss gets weaker if turnout stays close to general election levels, or if the Feinstein vote splits instead of going to one party. It also gets weaker if the Greens pick a candidate without a national name.