A great danger faces the Labour Party in the Holborn and St Pancras by-election. It is on course for a victory so resounding that Andy Burnham will feel confirmed in the belief he has no need to confront his backbenchers with the need for harsh measures.
Labour has been fortunate in its enemies in this campaign. At the start of September Zia Yusuf, Reform UK’s home affairs spokesman, tweeted:
“The frontrunner being foisted on the people of Holborn by Labour to replace the former prime minister Keir Starmer in our parliament was born in Somalia. Do you understand what’s happening?”
Nadine Dorries, who joined Reform UK from the Conservatives, described this remark as “nasty”, while Labour said it was “straightforward racism”.
Anyone who has actually met Sagal Abdi-Wali, the frontrunner who did indeed become the Labour candidate, knows she is about the friendliest person one could come across, always wreathed in smiles, quite unsuitable for portrayal as a hate figure.
Reform UK has no chance of victory in Holborn and St Pancras: at the last general election its candidate came fifth, with 2,236 votes, and this time Restore Britain is standing too.
Oddly enough, the one party which has as yet canvassed my support is Reform UK. About a fortnight ago two men appeared at my flat, which is in Camden Town, roughly speaking in the middle of the constituency.
It turned out they were looking, seemingly at random, for people willing to sign the Reform UK candidate’s nomination papers, and as soon as I had declined to do so they went away.
The Conservatives are not much better placed than Reform: their candidate came fourth in the 2024 general election, with 2,371 votes.
Sir Keir Starmer won the seat with 18,884 votes, Andrew Feinstein, an ally of Jeremy Corbyn, came second with 7,312 and the Green third with 4,030.
Zack Polanski, the leader of the Greens, is standing in the by-election, and has been endorsed by Feinstein.
So in theory the Left could mount a serious challenge. But in practice, there is quite widespread dislike of Polanski in Holborn and St Pancras, a constituency roughly coterminous with the London Borough of Camden.
In his first leaflet of the by-election campaign, Polanski declared: “I’ve lived in this area for 20 years.” It is true he used to live in Kentish Town, and in 2015 stood unsuccessfully (4th place, 96 votes) in a council by-election in Somers Town, both of which districts are within the constituency.
But he was at that time a candidate for the Liberal Democrats, and a cheerleader for Nick Clegg. Polanski left the Lib Dems after they refused to make him their candidate for the Richmond Park by-election of December 2016, in which Sarah Olney, for the Lib Dems, defeated Zac Goldsmith.
Polanski now lives in the constituency of Walthamstow, possibly on a house boat, but in any case a long way to the east of Holborn and St Pancras.
“We have to stop Polanski,” a Labour campaigner in Holborn told me this week. Quite often in politics the desire to stop a certain candidate overrides all other considerations.
One thing many voters know about Polanski is that he once gave an interview to a Sun journalist in which he assured her she could increase the size of her breasts by using her unconscious mind while under hypnosis, an episode touched on in a profile I wrote of him for The Spectator.
So Polanski is something of a gift to Labour, the party many voters will reckon they must back in order to be sure of defeating him.
But this means Labour’s actual policies go unexamined. Whenever Abdi-Wali is asked some difficult question, she smiles sweetly and finds a tactful way to avoid answering.
One cannot blame her for doing this: the frontrunner in a by-election is under strict orders to do exactly as her campaign managers tell her. Long gone are the days when Vincent Hanna, at the daily press conferences which used to be a feature of by-elections, could break a candidate down by exposing a gap between his or her opinions and the party line.
Abdi-Wali’s leaflets say, “For Hope Vote Labour”. They do not say, “For Efficient Repairs on Council Estates Vote Labour”.
As Lord Ashcroft’s Holborn and St Pancras focus group demonstrated earlier this week, many tenants are discontented with the record on repairs of Camden Council, which has been led by Abdi-Wali since the local elections in May, when the previous Labour leader lost his seat to a Green.
Those elections saw 30 Labour councillors returned, 11 Greens, 10 Lib Dems, three Conservatives and one Independent, so Labour narrowly retained control of the council.
The Conservative candidate for the by-election, Ewan Cameron, a former councillor, has told the local newspaper of record, the Camden New Journal, he intends to put the housing crisis centre stage, and has voiced the discontent of tenants even with newly built council properties which have not been finished properly.
But there is scant prospect of Abdi-Wali agreeing to have a debate with him about housing. She has instead rowed in behind Andy Burnham and declared her ambition to end rough sleeping.
Polanski claims that if elected, he would hold the Prime Minister to account, “stand for peace and justice around the world”, and has accused Camden Council of not taking a tough enough line on Gaza.
About 16 per cent of voters in Camden are Muslims, and Labour losses in the local elections tended to be heaviest in those wards.
But by selecting, in Abdi-Wali, a Muslim candidate who wears a head scarf, and by announcing sanctions on illegal West Bank settlements, Labour has deliberately reduced the amount of capital its opponents can make out of this issue.
George Galloway cannot bear to be ignored. His recent decision to stand in Holborn and St Pancras for the Workers Party complicates the picture on the Left by offering a political home to pro-Putin voters. In 2010 I went on an enjoyable tour of parts of east London on an open-top bus with Galloway, but it appears he does not propose to campaign in person this time, so his influence may not be very great. A full list of candidates can be found here.
There is still a fortnight to go, but at the moment the Labour machine has the contest under control. Anger with Starmer for jumping ship has been suppressed: one of the few to express it in public is the Housing Minister, Florence Eshalomi, who in an amusing Commons exchange congratulated Rishi Sunak on still being an active constituency MP.
Anything which might offend the generally left-wing voters of Camden, or the generally left-wing Labour backbenchers at Westminster, has been rigorously excluded from the campaign.
The soft Left heads for victory in Camden on 8th October by avoiding hard choices. There is no discussion of the welfare cuts which the new Chancellor of the Exchequer, John Healey, may have to announce in the Budget, which will not be held until 28th October.
Nor is any mention made of taxing property more heavily, a measure which would appal ageing Camden lefties who long ago, when large houses were cheap, set themselves up in grand parts of the constituency such as Primrose Hill.
Nor is any visible attempt being made to frame a programme which might help Labour to win against Reform in Red Wall seats. Tactical positioning and tactful smiles are seemingly enough for victory in Camden.
I love living in Camden, but one cannot claim its political instincts are any guide to those of the wider nation. Starmer was at sea in part because he lived for many years in a milieu where the truth of soft Left opinions does not need to be demonstrated, but is taken for granted.
How odd it would be if a new PM who boasts of knowing all about the North were to be misled by a by-election victory in North London into supposing the Government is doing just fine.