Ellie Chowns was not on the Holborn & St Pancras ballot, but the result lands in the same Green Party leadership fight around Zack Polanski. Labour won the Holborn & St Pancras by-election on October 9, 2026, and the Greens finished on 8,928 votes.
Sagal Abdi-Wali took the seat for Labour with 12,292 votes and 45.1%. The Green Party trailed by 3,364 votes.
Zack Polanski and Holborn & St Pancras
Polanski was the Green Party leader when the result came in, and the loss drew criticism after an extensive ground campaign. The source says a right-wing faction was openly conspiring to oust him, which puts the party’s next internal move at the center of the story.
The numbers also complicate the simple read of the contest. The Green Party tripled its vote from the 2024 general election to 8,928, but the source says the left-of-Labour vote still went down from 2024 to 2026.
2024 general election comparisons
That comparison runs through Andrew Feinstein, who stood as an independent pro-Palestine candidate against Keir Starmer in the 2024 general election. Polanski was able to win 1,000 more votes than Feinstein did then, and the combined votes for Feinstein and the Greens in 2024 came to approximately 11,000.
The by-election therefore left Labour with the seat and the Greens with a stronger raw total but a weaker position against Labour. Ewan Cameron took 1,922 votes and 7.1% for Conservative, Peter Newman took 1,612 votes and 5.9% for Reform UK, and the rest of the field was split among Patrick Stillman, George Galloway, Barmy Brunch, Helen Spiby-Vann and Jonathan Silberman.
Green Party leadership pressure
The practical question now is whether the party turns the result into a leadership challenge or tries to absorb it and move on. With Polanski under criticism and the vote share comparison pointing in two directions at once, the internal argument is no longer about whether there is pressure; it is about who moves first.
