Labour Holds Off Green Party in Election for Starmer’s Former London Seat

The Labour Party in Britain held onto the parliamentary seat vacated by former Prime Minister Keir Starmer, winning a special election in central London that was seen as an early test for Andy Burnham, Mr. Starmer’s successor. Sagal Abdi-Wali, who is currently the Labour Party leader of the local Camden Council, defeated the Green Party hopeful and other candidates to retain the Holborn and St. Pancras seat for her party. She won with 45 percent of the vote, according to results announced in the early hours of Friday morning. Ms. Abdi-Wali, who was born in Somalia and came to Britain as a child refugee in the 1990s, campaigned for many of the same policies that Mr. Burnham laid out in a speech at the Labour conference last month. “Opportunities for young people, ending rough sleeping on our streets, making things like water bills more affordable and a safe, secure home,” she wrote in a recent online article. “These are my big priorities for Camden. But most of all — I want to give you hope again.” The victory, while expected, is a boost to Mr. Burnham, who took over as the country’s leader after helping to engineer Mr. Starmer’s ouster over the summer. Surveys suggest that Mr. Burnham is popular with the public, and under his leadership, the party is once more leading in national polls . But he faces the same fundamental challenges that his predecessor did: a sluggish economy, rising prices and government bond yields because of the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, and not enough money to pay for all the competing priorities. Ms. Abdi-Wali defeated, among others, Zack Polanski, the leader of Britain’s Green Party, who was seeking his own seat in Parliament. Mr. Polanski ended up with 33 percent of the vote. Mr. Polanski’s party has been having more success in British politics recently, and he had hoped that a victory in the central London district would add to the sense of momentum for the movement he leads. But his political success has been marred by several controversies in recent months. Over the weekend, a small group of Green Party activists voted at the party’s annual conference to declare that Zionism is racism, a move that infuriated many supporters of Israel. The measure passed with just over 1,000 votes out of the 1,800 cast at the conference. The party has more than 230,000 members. Mr. Polanski did not vote for the measure, but he has refused to criticize it. Asked later by the BBC about the motion, he said : “If your Zionism is the displacement of the Palestinian people, then that is clearly racist, and I say that as a Jewish leader of a British political party.”