Holborn and St Pancras Count Under Way, Labour Favoured to Hold
Counting was under way in the early hours of 9 October for the Holborn and St Pancras byelection, with early indications pointing to a Labour hold. The count is taking place at Camden Council's headquarters, after polls closed on 8 October, and the declaration is expected in the early hours of Friday The Guardian.
Reporters at the count described signs of an imminent Labour win. Votes will be counted over the next few hours, according to live coverage, a standard overnight procedure for a Westminster byelection held on a Thursday The Guardian.
The contest drew fifteen candidates. Officials verified 27,309 ballot papers, putting turnout at 38.76% BBC. Polling day was 8 October. Under House of Commons Library guidance, the writ-to-poll timetable for a parliamentary byelection is 21 to 27 working days, a window designed to allow the poll to fall on a Thursday. The contest had already entered parliamentary record, with the Commons Chamber Hansard for 15 September 2026 noting the Green party in the Holborn and St Pancras by-election.
The baseline is a seat previously won by Keir Starmer. He took Holborn and St Pancras with 18,884 votes, or 48.9 per cent The Times. His majority was 11,500 at the 2024 general election, down from nearly 28,000 votes in 2019 The Guardian. The leftwing independent who challenged Starmer in the constituency in 2024 is not standing in this byelection and has endorsed Zack Polanski.
Polanski campaigned in the seat rather than attend the Green Party conference vote in Brighton on Zionism policy. The motion adopted there said Zionism should be treated as any other form of racism and called for Israel to be replaced by a single Palestinian state. Four of the party's five MPs then publicly rejected the adoption of that policy. The Greens enter this count with a recent precedent for overturning Labour majorities in byelections, having overcome a larger Labour majority to win Gorton and Denton in February 2026.
The broader context here is one of competing pressures on both main contenders. For Labour, the arithmetic favours retention, yet the contraction from the 2019 majority to 11,500 in 2024 defines the margin the party must defend on a reduced byelection turnout. For the Greens, Gorton and Denton establishes that such majorities can be overturned in current conditions, while the endorsement from the 2024 independent challenger consolidates part of the non-Labour left vote behind Polanski.
Looking at what this means for Westminster calculations, the internal Green division over the Brighton motion adds uncertainty to any reading of a strong Green performance or a Labour hold. A Labour victory would confirm the party can contain a concentrated Green challenge in inner London even after a difficult policy week for its rival. A closer-than-expected result would keep attention on transferability of independent and protest votes, and on whether parliamentary party management, as seen in the swift rejection by four Green MPs, limits or amplifies electoral fallout.
