Labour has announced its candidate to contest the upcoming by-election for Sir Keir Starmer’s former seat after the former prime minister’s decision to step down from Parliament.
Sagal Abdi-Wali, the leader of Camden Council, will attempt to defend the Holborn and St Pancras constituency for the party.
Ms Abdi-Wali has represented Camden Square as a councillor since 2022.
She assumed leadership of the council in May,
Scheduled for October 8, the vote follows Sir Keir’s announcement earlier this month that he is leaving Parliament, having decided it was the “right time” to focus on international affairs.
Ms Adbi-Wali said: “I am delighted that local members have put their trust in me to be Labour’s candidate in the area I’ve grown up in.
“This place welcomed my family as refugees and gave us hope when we needed it most.
“I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to build a life here, serving our community as a councillor, school governor and community activist. Now I am standing to say thank you and to give back the hope you gave me.
“Throughout this campaign, I promise to put our communities at the heart of everything I do, now and for the future. Together, we can make hope win.”
Green Party leader Zack Polanski wants to stand for the seat but is facing a challenge from local councillor Hamza Chowdhury, who has put himself forward for the Green nomination.
Mr Polanski, a London Assembly member, said on Wednesday that he was “proud” to face a rival and dismissed Mr Chowdhury’s comments that the constituency does not need “another MP who arrives during an election campaign” then “disappears once the votes are counted”.
“I think the local party already knows that doesn’t describe me at all. It’s a place that I know very, very well,” Mr Polanski said.
The Greens are likely to pose the greatest threat in the by-election to Labour, which has held the inner London constituency continuously since the seat was created in 1983, winning at least 40% of the vote at every election.
Only two Labour MPs have ever represented Holborn and St Pancras: former health secretary Frank Dobson, from 1983 to 2015, then Sir Keir.
At the most recent general election in 2024, Sir Keir held the seat with 48.9% of the vote, ahead of independent candidate Andrew Feinstein in second place on 18.9% and the Greens in third on 10.4%.
The Conservatives came fourth on 7.2%, Reform finished fifth on 6.1% and the Liberal Democrats were sixth on 5.8%.
The popularity of the independent and Green candidates at the 2024 contest, finishing second and third respectively, may have been partly down to former Labour voters protesting against Sir Keir’s refusal to take a stronger position on Israel’s actions in Gaza in the war with Hamas.
The Green Party also made gains in the May local elections in the London Borough of Camden, the local authority that covers the constituency.
