Keir Starmer’s resignation means there will be a by-election in his Holborn and St Pancras constituency. On the upside, it’s a contest that I can cover from the comfort of my own home. On the other hand, I am anticipating a huge amount of leaflets heading our way with some dread.

Some thoughts on how it may go and what it tells us about the state of Labour and some of its challengers.

The battle for Starmer’s old patch

Holborn and St Pancras is a very, very, very safe Labour seat. One measure of that is that even in the 2026 local and devolved elections, when Labour was being badly beaten almost everywhere, in these wards the party still had clear daylight between it and its rivals, at least in terms of votes cast. My back-of-the-envelope calculation of the percentages:

• Labour – 38 per cent

• Green – 29 per cent

• Conservative – 10 per cent

• Reform – 9 per cent

• Liberal Democrat – 7 per cent

• Camden People’s Alliance – 4 per cent

Now, it’s worth noting that the council election results themselves were much closer than this. Each of the individual wards that make up Holborn and St Pancras was very tightly contested. The local council is pretty effective and a central theme of its campaigning was “never mind that Keir Starmer fellow, look at our outstanding ratings from a bunch of watchdogs and other organisations”.

In the 2026 locals, the Camden People’s Alliance — a small far-left party whose leader, Andrew Feinstein, got 19 per cent of the vote in the 2024 general election — ran as part of a pact with the Green Party, so if that alliance is renewed for the by-election, they start from a higher base than a crude calculation would suggest.

But Labour is currently enjoying an improvement in its poll rating under Andy Burnham, and the Greens’ change in position under Zack Polanski makes it harder for them to pick up anti-Labour tactical votes from across the spectrum.

It’s worth thinking about how we’d see this by-election if it were a seat where the Liberal Democrats were starting on about a quarter of the vote and Labour on about 41 per cent. We would assume that the Lib Dems would be able to pick up not just some direct Labour switchers but also pull in the support of Conservatives, even Reform voters, to win this by-election.

The Greens have never faced this kind of by-election before, and we can’t say with confidence that they can’t pull off that kind of tactical voting, but my hunch is that the Greens are seen as just too leftwing for that.

While they will get some Reform voters voting tactically on an anti-system vote, Conservative voters will be keen to avoid being represented by the modern Green Party. So given Labour’s improvement in standing, the party ought to hold the seat.

But we just don’t know, because this is uncharted territory for Polanski’s Greens and also for Labour.