For a year, I lived in Holborn and St Pancras. Crammed into a flat with three friends who seemed incapable of cleaning up after themselves, I came to, rather reluctantly at times, feel a certain level of fondness for the North London seat.
Our local, The Pineapple, was never short of dim witted young professionals who paraded around with grotesque mullets atop their heads, bragging about their 2:1 in social sciences from Durham. ‘No but like you don’t get it man, baccy is bare awful yeah’ they would mutter, rather obnoxiously, amongst themselves, as they rolled yet another joint.
When one stepped outside the pub and wandered a tad south, they would come face to face with Kentish Town High Street, adorned with a great mass of charity shops and we-promise-we’re-abiding-by-the-law vape stores. It wasn’t perfect, but it was home.
The MP for the area was some bloke called Keir Starmer. We didn’t see much of him, bar a few leaflets with his face spread across them, but apparently he’s stepping down now. The papers are saying that there will be a by-election too. Great.
Who the Constituency Labour Party selects as the candidate for such a contest is still anyone’s guess. The grouping has around 2,000 members, making it one of the most populated CLPs in the country, and the constituency has only ever returned a Labour MP. With such a record, no sane person would ever consider challenging the seat and hope to win. You’d have a better chance at getting your breasts enlarged by some second-rate hypnotist than winning as a non-Labour candidate.
Oh look! Zack Polanski has hinted that he will do just that. Speaking earlier this year, the Green Party leader had suggested that Holborn and St Pancras would be one of his target seats were he to try and force his way into the Commons. Coupled with the fact that, just yesterday, a Green Party spokesperson refused to rule out a Polanski candidacy, and it looks as though he is really considering going for the seat.
Were Mr Polanski to put his name forward for the Greens, he would be doing far more than adding his name to a list, however. He would be putting his entire political platform on trial, asking the people of Holborn and St Pancras to be the judge, jury and executioner of his pet project.
If he somehow wins, he’d stick it to the establishment, proving to any doubters that the Greens are still very much a force to be reckoned with. If he loses, then he’ll be forever known as the guy that bragged about being better than Starmer, only to go and lose in his old seat.
Polanski has positioned himself as the antidote to Starmerism. The medicine to the illness. The pint to the boredom. And, in positioning himself in such a way, he has been handed the opportunity to defeat the cursed ideology in the very seat that gave birth to it.
And he certainly thinks that Starmer deserves to have the boot kicked in too. When he stepped away from Number 10, Polanski argued that he had, “lost the confidence of the country because of his abject failure to challenge the power and wealth of an establishment which has taken for themselves while leaving the vast majority in a cost of living crisis.” Use a comma, Zack.
For a good few months, Polanski was amassing more and more support – particularly from younger voters. He was viewed as a fresh face for the British left, as someone who could ‘make hope normal again’ and put an end to the constant doom loop that Britain found itself in.
But, since Burnham has moved into Downing Street, the Greens have slipped into a bout of irrelevance. Despite possessing a great number of councillors and members, the Party has been blunted by Burnham’s progressive agenda, relegated to the depths of local government and the dizzying heights of 13 per cent in the polls.
And this is what makes Holborn and St Pancras such an awkward problem for Polanski. The seat, despite Starmer’s abysmal performance whilst in office, still leans in Labour’s favour. According to the latest stats from Electoral Calculus, Labour now possess a 59 per cent chance of winning – trumping the Greens who sit on 40 per cent.
40 per cent is rather a long way from the political uproar that Polanski has spent so long promising us. For what Polanski has boasted of thus far, this is supposed to be the easy part. Attack the Starmerite Labour project constantly, position yourself as the replacement to then, and then go and win yourself a seat. And yet, he looks set to fall at the last hurdle. The seat will likely remain red.
Because the Greens may have succeeded in shifting Labour leftwards. But shifting Labour to one side is very different from replacing it altogether.
Indeed, his greatest misstep here has been to mistake the popularity of the Greens as evidence that they will become Labour’s replacement. The former is rather an easy task – anyone can be popular. The latter, however, is considerably harder, requiring some form of serious political operation.
The Greens’ purpose is not to replace Labour. Instead, they serve as a check on Labour, preventing them from drifting too far to the centre. A few too many Blairites in Parliament and Polanski makes his voice heard, warning the Party of the dangers of laxer regulations and lower taxes. But that’s it. They serve as a doorstop, not a replacement.
And, whilst it may be a disappointment to many Green Party members across the country, they have accomplished their goal. They have helped rid the country of Starmer and push Labour further to the left. They may continue to mull around, criticising policies here and there, but they have served their purpose.
Polanski may well choose to stand in Holborn and St Pancras. If he opts not to, he would look rather weak. He can use the competition as a referendum on his politics, to show that the Green dream lives on. But if he falls short, he will have almost certainly cemented the Greens’ fate. He’s been boasting about taking the fight to Starmer’s brand of politics for some time.
Now’s his chance to show us all that he’s serious. If the Greens cannot win in Starmer’s back garden, where can they win?