Andy Burnham’s Labour has held Holborn and St Pancras, demonstrating that it can draw support from liberal and left-leaning voters, the Guardian said in an editorial.
The constituency contains large numbers of young adults, students, professionals and Muslims — territory the editorial described as fertile ground for the Greens’ ecopopulism. Labour nevertheless prevailed.
Labour’s Sagal Abdi-Wali took 45% of the vote in the seat formerly held by Sir Keir Starmer. The Greens more than tripled their share to 33%, but the result left Zack Polanski’s ambition of entering parliament unfulfilled.
Having won the leave-voting seat of Makerfield in June, Mr Burnham can now point to an appeal that spans Labour’s divided electorate, the editorial said. Turnout in London was low and Labour’s vote share dropped 3.7 points — but the piece noted that this compares with an average 19.3-point fall across four byelections held under Mr Burnham’s predecessor. The new leader had bought Labour breathing space and checked the Green advance, it added.
For the Greens, the editorial called the outcome a sobering moment, coming in a year that began with a promise to convert voters’ appetite for change into a serious challenge to Labour. A motion declaring “Zionism is racism” passed at the party’s conference probably cost it support, the editorial said, while cautioning that the central London result alone cannot definitively establish that.
A separate question concerns leadership. Mr Polanski has since said he would have voted against the motion, and the editorial asked why he did not make his opposition clear when it mattered the weekend before.
Mr Polanski intends to stay on as leader, and the expanded, radical membership gives him a base inside the party that is likely to shield him from an immediate coup, according to the editorial. But with calls for his resignation growing, he must attempt to remain in post while restoring confidence in the Greens’ electoral prospects.
Difficulties had been visible before the conference, the editorial said. The party’s spring polling surge has faded; in March, YouGov placed the Greens second nationally behind Reform on 21%, while they now sit fourth on 10%. Mr Burnham, it said, has taken much of the Greens’ rhetorical thunder by consciously invoking a more left-wing agenda.
As Mr Polanski’s profile has grown, the public appears to have become less convinced by his political talents, the editorial said, noting that his net favourability rating has fallen from -6 to -29 since the start of the year. The Greens should not be written off, it added: Mr Burnham has yet to convert hope into lasting support, which will depend on what his government delivers — particularly as prices rise — rather than on whom it defeats.
In a BBC interview, the Greens’ former co-leader Jonathan Bartley warned that the influx of members had changed the party and that some newcomers were unaware of its traditions of consensus and of its opposition to political “purity tests”. Mr Polanski’s deputy, Rachel Millward, said party structures needed to become “fully democratic and strategic”.
That may not satisfy the Green MP Siân Berry, who said she wanted to “fix the serious flaws” in the Zionism motion.
Leadership is missing and responsibility for that rests squarely with Mr Polanski, the editorial concluded. He has shown he can communicate persuasively; if he stays in post, it said, he must acknowledge what went wrong and build support for changing the controversial Zionism policy.
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