Labour’s Sagal Abdi-Wali has won the Holborn and St Pancras byelection, defeating Green party leader Zack Polanski in the early hours of Friday, according to a Guardian Opinion column by Jonathan Freedland.
Freedland described the result as the latest boost for Prime Minister Andy Burnham, and cited veteran psephologist Peter Kellner, who said the win “defied history”.
Kellner pointed out that, judged on the past half-century, Labour ought to have lost, given what he called a “truly dreadful record” defending its own seats while in government against byelection challenges from the left or centre-left – the Greens or the Liberal Democrats.
The average swing against Labour in such contests has been 24%, Kellner said. On those figures, he wrote, Polanski “should have won at a canter”. He did not.
The outcome reinforces the case Burnham made for replacing the previous Holborn and St Pancras MP, Keir Starmer, as Labour leader – that he was uniquely placed to see off challenges from both left and right. Freedland noted that the London win, alongside Burnham’s own success in Makerfield in June, amounts to early vindication of that argument.
Freedland credited Burnham’s leftward shift with persuading many progressive voters they need not back the Greens to get what they want, and that Labour deserves another chance. But he argued Polanski deserves a share of the credit as “a most generous adversary”.
While Polanski initially brought energy, enthusiasm and membership growth to the Greens, Freedland wrote that under his leadership the party has dismantled the moral halo it once held as the UK’s foremost advocate for the planet and reshaped itself into something darker.
He pointed to Sunday’s conference vote branding Zionism as racism, which he said Polanski ducked, and noted the party now demands the destruction of a state founded – and still regarded by most Jews – as an essential refuge, one whose creation was approved by a UN vote.
Freedland stressed that “destruction” is not metaphorical. The motion passed states that the change it seeks – a Palestinian state replacing, rather than existing alongside, Israel – must be secured “by all available means”, a phrase clarified in an accompanying booklet produced by the motion’s proposers to include “armed struggle”, meaning violence, he wrote.
He argued the Greens have allowed themselves to be toxified by “cranks and bigots”, crowding out moderate or nuanced voices, including many longtime local activists. In his view, the moment called for leadership, but the Greens have instead “a quack hypnotherapist” who, faced with a difficult decision, ran away. Polanski has since said he would not have voted for the Zionism resolution, the column noted.
Freedland also observed that former Green leader Caroline Lucas could not say yes when asked by Newsnight whether Polanski should remain in his post. He suggested Burnham might be quietly pleased that Polanski performed well enough on Thursday to fend off an immediate challenge, since the longer Polanski leads the Greens, the better it is for Labour.
Turning to Reform UK, Freedland wrote that the party – for so long Labour’s strongest challenger in the polls – saw its conference overshadowed by eve-of-conference revelations that two senior aides to Nigel Farage had been caught on film apparently discussing how they might get around UK electoral law to take a £500,000 donation from a US benefactor.
He noted that scandals bite hardest when they confirm suspicions voters already hold, pointing to YouGov polling in July in which three in four Britons regarded Farage as sleazy and 56% described him as “very sleazy”.
According to the column, the only Reform debate that really cut through was one started by Suella Braverman, with what he called an eccentric and exclusivist insistence that certain minorities – even those born in England into families rooted in the country for several generations – are not truly English, a definition that would exclude Rishi Sunak and a good portion of the England football team.
On the Conservatives, Freedland wrote that an opening exists for the party to reclaim its place as the dominant party of the right, but that here too fortune has favoured Burnham. He said Kemi Badenoch continues to enjoy higher ratings than her party, though that “isn’t saying much”, and that she has belatedly recognised victory will not come solely from trying to out-Reform Reform.
He cited her conference pitch – promising to abolish inheritance tax on even the most expensive homes and extend free childcare to those earning over £100,000 – as a dividing line with Labour that Burnham could only have dreamed of, making plain that the Tories’ priority is to help some of the richest people in the land.
As for the Liberal Democrats, Freedland wrote that Burnham will be happy to see them muddling along as an inoffensive receptacle for Tory-sceptic voters in areas that would never go to Labour, even as he wants to eat into their vote by promising to deliver on Europe and electoral reform in the next term.
He described Burnham’s conference speech as the highlight of the season, showing a politician comfortable making arguments. One cabinet minister told him that, after Starmer, listening to Burnham was like “gulping down oxygen”.
But Freedland cautioned that the weather will change. He noted the government and everyone else is paying too much to borrow, that the welfare budget will at some point have to be cut, and that Labour MPs may be less cheerful when asked to vote for reduced benefits – particularly as they face re-selection contests in their local parties, a process beginning as soon as January.
He also listed a hole in defence spending to fill, public services crying out for cash, a US president apparently bent on driving up global oil prices and therefore inflation, and a civil service machine ministers privately curse as bloated and ineffective.
What’s more, Freedland argued, the middle of a parliament is when governments should be focused entirely on delivery. Instead, he wrote, vital time has been spent on the transition from one PM to another, time Labour will not get back.
For now, Burnham is lucky in his opponents, whose choices hurt them and help him, the column concluded. But the skies will eventually darken – and when they do, Freedland wrote, the prime minister will reach once again for that magic lamp, hoping against hope that it still works.
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