Camden council leader Sagal Abdi-Wali held the Holborn and St Pancras seat (Alamy)

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Camden council leader Sagal Abdi-Wali won the North London seat, with the Green Party coming second.

Labour won 45 per cent of the vote – a total of 12,292 – with the party’s majority falling from 11,572 in 2024 to 3,364.

Polanski, who stood as the Green Party candidate, received 8,928 votes, equivalent to 33 per cent of the vote. 

The Conservatives came third with just 1,922 votes.

The by-election, which was triggered after former prime minister Keir Starmer vacated the seat, was a key test for new leader Andy Burnham, whose leadership has seen Labour boosted in the polls.

Speaking after her victory, Abdi-Wali said: “I hope this moment also says something about who gets to belong, for people who look like me, I hope they see themselves reflected in this place and know that their path too belongs here. This is Camden, and this is Britain.”

“That is what this victory represents. Winning not by making people afraid of each other, but by bringing people together.”

The by-election comes after Green Party members voted at their conference in Brighton for the controversial “Zionism is racism” motion, which is now party policy. Four of the party’s five MPs had spoken out publicly against the motion before the vote. 

Speaking to broadcasters after the result was announced, Polanski said that while he had lost, the Green movement “is so much bigger than one election or one motion.”

On the motion, Polanski said that “nobody will be excluded in the Green Party based on faith and religion”.

Polling shows the Conservatives remain below where they were at the 2024 election (Alamy)

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“When we win the next election, and we will, we are going to need to hit the ground running,” leader Kemi Badenoch told Tory members on Sunday. The optimistic tone was shared by activists throughout the get-together in Birmingham.

A year ago, the Leader of the Opposition entered conference season facing questions about her leadership and how much longer it would last, with Robert Jenrick – then a defeated Conservative leadership rival, now a Reform UK MP – waiting in the wings.

Badenoch, tasked with rebuilding the party after its historic 2024 defeat, was accused of failing to cut through.

However, her personal ratings have improved markedly since then.

Badenoch’s net favourability has risen by 20 per cent since September 2025, from -35 to -15, according to YouGov, while among 2024 Conservative voters it has risen from +27 to +55.

At the same time, she has strengthened her position at the top of the party, shaping it in her image.

But while Badenoch’s ratings may have improved, as Ipsos’ Keiran Pedley set out in a piece for The House over the weekend, the party’s ratings remain stubbornly weak. 

Just a quarter of Britons believe the Tories are fit to govern, Ipsos data shows. Only one in five think the party is concerned about people in real need, while more than half see it as a party that is out of date.

The Conservatives are currently hovering at around 20 per cent in voting intention polls – below the 23.7 per cent they received at the 2024 general election, when they lost over 250 seats in a historic defeat.

As pollster Sir John Curtice explained at a fringe event in Birmingham on Sunday, current polling “still leaves you [Tories] four points below what was your worst ever performance”.

Luke Tryl, Executive Director at think tank More in Common, said the “killer stat” for the Conservatives is that “only a third of people who say Kemi Badenoch is doing a good job as leader of the Conservatives would vote Tory.”

“That is just a huge gap,” Tryl told PoliticsHome, adding that in focus groups people often say they “wish she was in another party” so they could vote for her.

Tory peer and pollster Lord Ashcroft put it bluntly in his assessment to Tory MPs, telling a reception that while the public is coming round to Badenoch, “unfortunately, their view of the Conservative Party is taking a bit longer to catch up.

“In other words, voters like her, they’re just not convinced about the rest of you.”

Tryl said there are reasons for cautious optimism for the Tories, including data showing that the Conservatives could find themselves in a “sweet spot” where voters on the left and right tactically vote for them to keep out another party.

More in Common data shows that 30 per cent of Labour supporters would vote for a Conservative candidate to stop Reform.

Though Tryl added: “The danger is, do you end up as everyone’s second choice?” 

Lord Hayward, Tory peer and pollster, said the Conservatives were now doing “much better” in council by-elections, “particularly in one group of seats that is middle-class areas, where people might have been inclined towards Reform a year ago.”

Hayward is also less concerned about the gap between Badenoch’s personal ratings and the party’s, telling PoliticsHome: “Historically, it’s worth remembering that Conservative leaders have always had better ratings than the Conservative Party brand. 

“That’s just a historical fact. There being one or two exceptions, but generally that’s the case.”

But, as Pedley wrote: “Some voters may be willing to listen again, but there is far less evidence they are ready to hand the Conservatives power.”

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Speaking at Conservative Party conference in Birmingham this week, Street argued that the Labour Prime Minister was goading the Tories into a hardline EU policy that would cost them key votes at the next general election.

“It is a trap that has been set for us by a very clever politician,” he warned.

Street, who was West Midlands mayor from 2017 to 2024 before helping set up centre-right organisation Prosper UK, spoke at a panel discussion hosted by think tank More in Common and chaired by PoliticsHome.

On the eve of Tory conference, the party’s deputy leader Alex Burghart said the Conservatives would reverse Labour government steps to deepen UK ties with the EU, describing the reset initiated by former prime minister Keir Starmer as “extraordinary” and “disastrous”.

Burghart told The Sunday Times that if elected to government, the Conservatives would undo UK-EU deals in areas like food standards and youth mobility.

At Labour Party conference days before, Burnham said he would explore options to take the UK closer to the bloc, which could include rejoining.

Asked about Burghart’s remarks, Street said his party must avoid stepping into the Prime Minister’s electoral “trap”.

He argued that it will be harder for Kemi Badenoch’s party to win back voters it lost to the Liberal Democrats in southern England at the next general election if it is seen as pushing an anti-EU line.

“The time when we went completely blue was when we secured the Conservative curious votes on the left and did not alienate the Reform frontier. That is utopia as far as we are concerned. I do believe that can be done [again],” Street told PoliticsHome.

“If you are sitting in Labour HQ, you have to stop that happening. What is the best card to stop that happening? Europe is the best card to stop that happening.

“You stop those Lib Dems who we think we can win on the economy coming back. You frighten them by our position on Brexit and where we are with our relationship with Europe.”

He continued: “What does Mr Burnham want? He wants us to fall into the trap of saying ‘you cannot reopen this debate’ – I agree, we must not re-open the referendum – but then we go, we don’t allow any closer relationship with Europe. 

“That solidifies those Lib Dem voters against us.”

Street added that instead of pledging to rip up new agreements with Brussels, the Tories should focus on “practical ideas to get the best out of the current negotiation with Europe, because that’s what those Lib Dem considerers want us to do”.

At a fringe event elsewhere focused on ‘blue collar Conservatism’ and winning back supporters from Reform, Tory members disagreed with the strategy set out by Street and called on the Conservatives to adopt a hardline EU position.

Bill Etheridge, a former UKIP member of the European Parliament who recently joined the Conservatives, said the party should be “full-blooded Brexiteers”.

“As a party, we have a golden, golden thing that we can use. We can improve our finances as a nation. We can stop the boats. We can sort out immigration. It’s called Brexit,” he said.

“We haven’t taken advantage of any of the benefits. This is our opportunity now to be full-blooded Brexiteers. This is where we could go. We can make such a difference as working-class blue-collar conservatives voting for Brexit.”

Additional reporting by Zoë Crowther