Margaret on a by-election in Keir Starmer’s old seat, a majority of 3,364, a swing of 13 points and the great British tradition of declaring victory in second place
Saturday 10 October, 7.45am, a kitchen in a house that votes the way the weather behaves, a pot of tea strong enough to dissolve a manifesto and a newspaper opened to a by-election result that I have now read four times in the hope that it will improve.
Dear Diary. My name is Margaret Colley, I write for prat.uk, and I have spent many years watching the Labour and Green parties explain why their latest disappointment is secretly a triumph. It is the most reliable genre in British politics, more dependable than the shipping forecast and slightly less accurate. Yesterday’s by-election in Holborn and St Pancras gave both parties a fresh chance to practise it, and they did not waste the opportunity.
The Result
ITV News reported that the by-election was held on Friday 9 October 2026, after Keir Starmer resigned the seat. It says Sagal Abdi-Wali, the Camden Council leader, held it for Labour, with Labour on 45 percent and the Greens on 33 percent, and a majority of 3,364. The report puts the swing to the Greens at 13 percent, with the Green vote share rising by 22.4 points. The Conservative candidate, Ewan Cameron, came third, followed by Reform and the Liberal Democrats. I give you those figures exactly as ITV gave them, because a by-election is the one occasion on which the numbers are precise and the interpretations are not.
I should be clear that I am not a neutral observer. I am an opponent of both these parties, a position I hold with the contentment of a woman who has read their manifestos. But I try to be fair with the facts, and the fact is that Labour won, with a decent margin, in a seat that was vacated by its own former leader. Whatever else is said, that is not a disaster for Labour. It is not a triumph either. It is a result with the emotional range of a damp biscuit.
The Greens’ Moral Victory
The report quotes the Green leader, Zack Polanski, saying that he wanted to win, and that no-one runs an election to lose. It also quotes him saying that he can of course carry on as leader of the Green Party, that voters on the doorstep backed his plans on rent controls, the climate crisis and nationalising Thames Water, and that second place was an amazing opportunity to build to the next election. He told Labour’s new candidate, as the report puts it, that voters wanted to give Andy Burnham a chance, and that Burnham now had that chance. He also denied losing control of the party, pointing to membership rising from roughly 55,000 to 60,000 up to 220,000.
I admire the energy. A second place with a swing of thirteen points is genuinely a strong result by the standards of by-elections, and it would be churlish to say otherwise. But I notice the language of a party that has not quite won. Amazing opportunity is how people describe an event that they did not choose. It is the political equivalent of telling a delayed train passenger that they have been given bonus time at the station.
A Pattern
This is not the first time the Greens have run Labour close in a seat Labour used to regard as its own. According to the Wikipedia account of the 2026 Labour leadership crisis, the Greens won the Gorton and Denton by-election on 27 February, with Labour third. The page lists that result among the trigger events in a long political season. I mention it because a pattern is worth noticing: Labour’s vote is being squeezed from the left by a party that offers rent controls and nationalisation, and from the right by parties that offer nothing it will confess to. The squeeze is real. The remedy is for Labour to decide what it is for, and I am not hopeful.
My colleagues at prat.uk have followed the story with their usual delight. Their piece on the Holborn and St Pancras by-election is a model of the form, and their earlier piece on the Greens targeting Starmer’s old seat now reads like a weather forecast that came partly true. And the Gorton and Denton by-election is the one that started the whole conversation.
What Did The Voters Say
I cannot tell you, because the sources do not say. They say who won, by how much, and what the losers said afterwards. They do not say why the voters voted as they did, how turnout compared with other contests or what the doorsteps were like, apart from the Green leader’s own account of them. That is the usual position with a by-election. We have a number and a story, and the two are only distantly related.
What I would add is a rule I have followed for years. Do not trust anyone who tells you what a by-election means in the first twenty-four hours. A by-election means whatever the next general election lets it mean. Until then it is a parlour game with ballot papers.
A Word For The Winner
I should say something kind about Sagal Abdi-Wali, since she has just won an election and has not yet been asked to defend a single policy. ITV quotes her saying that her victory showed the success of diversity in the borough, adding that this is Camden, and this is Britain. That is a good line, and I have no quarrel with it. I wish her well in the House. The Commons has a way of making the cheeriest newcomers sound like old hands within a month.
The Reading Pencil
I am always struck, at moments like this, by how much of politics is vocabulary. Swing. Squeeze. Surge. Breakthrough. These are words that make a small movement of votes sound like a geological event. Strip them away and what remains is a few thousand people deciding that on a Friday in October they would rather vote for one candidate than another. That is democracy, and it is wonderful, and it needs no adjectives.
The tea has gone cold and the newspaper is damp with it. Outside, the sky is deciding between drizzle and downpour. It will choose drizzle, because drizzle is the only thing this country can be relied on to deliver.
Closing Entry
I file for Bohiney Magazine when the Americans ask me to translate, and they ask often. Today the translation is that the party in power held a seat and the party in second place felt like winning. For a primer on the comic tradition that makes sense of all this, my guide to political satire in the UK is a good place to start, and for a wry finish to the morning, NewsBiscuit is a dependable friend. The biscuit tin is empty and the kettle is on. Goodnight, Diary, or good morning. Count the votes, not the adjectives.
SOURCE: bohiney.com
