LABOUR activists were celebrating through the early hours after winning the Holborn and St Pancras by-election this morning, as council leader Sagal Abdi-Wali finished 28 days of campaigning by becoming the constituency’s new MP.

She saw off the challenge from Zack Polanski, the Green Party leader, by polling 12,292 to his 8,928, with all of the other candidates left trailing. From the winner’s lectern, Ms Abdi-Wali, who came to London as a refugee fleeing the 1990s civil war in Somalia, immediately hit back at those who had posted online abuse about her life story.

“In Camden, our diversity is our strength and our cohesion has been too hard won to take for granted,” she said. “Since I was a child, I’ve watched people from across Camden work to build communities where difference is not something to fear but something to value. We cannot allow that work, built over generations, to be casually undone by those who seek to divide us.”

Ms Abdi-Wali had been thrown into the national spotlight even before she was selected as Labour’s candidate, when Zia Yusuf, Reform’s home affairs spokesman, sent an infamous tweet about where she had been born which included the line “do you understand what’s happening?” The fallout saw Labour figures call the post “straightforward racism”, but Ms Abdi-Wali’s campaign team were able to harness the anger by asking voters to send a message back by electing her.

She said this morning: “People need to believe that politics can make their lives better and so that their communities can thrive, and that tomorrow can be better than today.”

The result was by no means a big shock: Labour has held the seat since it was created in 1983. Her claim from the stage to be the first female MP for Holborn and St Pancras is correct, although the late Baroness Lena Jeger had served in the old Holborn and St Pancras South constituency for 15 years in the 1960s and 1970s.

Despite its status as a Labour stronghold, the party sent out hundreds of activists every night for a month, knocking on tens of thousands of doors and delivering many more leaflets. That effort returned 12,292 votes on a turnout of only 38.8 per cent – nearly two-thirds of eligible residents did not cast a ballot.

By-elections are always different, but turnout here has been far higher at general elections, reaching a high of 69 per cent, and Ms Abdi-Wali’s predecessor, Sir Keir Starmer, won the seat in 2024 with a majority of 11,572. His largest total, in 2017, was more than 40,000 votes.

The seat has not been viewed as marginal since its creation, but Ms Abdi-Wali’s majority of 3,364 is the lowest the constituency has seen and could make it a target for the Greens next time.

There will be soul-searching to do first for Mr Polanski, who had taken a risk by running here while leading the party. The Greens increased their vote share by more than 22 per cent, but that has to be set against the absence of last time’s runner-up, the independent Andrew Feinstein, who decided not to stand again and had endorsed Mr Polanski.

A Green Party spokesperson said: “Achieving a huge swing in one of Labour’s safest seats – an increase of 22 per cent in vote share since the general election – is an incredible result for the Green Party, and during a honeymoon period for the new PM.

“We are disappointed to miss out tonight but any ideas of a return to the cosy two-party system is just wishful thinking on the part of the establishment. We are here to stay and just getting started. The voters have delivered a message to the Labour Government today. They want real change; they want rent controls, they want to see an end to the privatised water rip-off; and they want to see justice for Palestinians.

“On the climate crisis, Labour will not have an easy political ride if they bring in new North Sea drilling.”