Former child refugee selected as Labour candidate in byelection for Starmer’s old seat

A former child refugee who became the leader of Camden council has been selected to be the Labour candidate for the byelection in Holborn and St Pancras.

Sagal Abdi-Wali, who came to the UK from Somalia as a child in the 1990s and was elected leader of Camden council in May, was chosen to represent Labour members in the north London seat vacated by Keir Starmer. She was previously the chair of the local constituency Labour party, after first being elected as a Labour councillor in 2022.

Abdi-Wali, said she was “delighted” and promised to put the community at the heart of her campaign. “This place welcomed my family as refugees and gave us hope when we needed it most,” she said.

“I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to build a life here, serving our community as a councillor, school governor, and community activist. Now I am standing to say thank you and to give back the hope you gave me. Throughout this campaign, I promise to put our communities at the heart of everything I do, now and for the future. Together, we can make hope win.”

Abdi-Wali has worked for more than a decade as a volunteer and trustee for local charities and is a governor of two schools in the borough, according to Labour. The party’s members queued outside St Pancras church in Euston for the selection meeting on Wednesday night, with voters including MP Georgia Gould and her mother, Lady Gail Rebuck.

The local figure will probably go head to head with Zack Polanski, who announced his intention to fight for the Commons seat. Local Greens in Holborn and St Pancras still have to formally select their candidate under a process that will not be completed until next Friday. But it seems likely they will endorse Polanski, under whose leadership the party has soared in the polls, with membership more than tripling.

The high-stakes byelection will pit the star power of Polanski against a resurgent Labour under Andy Burnham, with voters going to the polls on 8 October. Starmer announced he was stepping down from the seat he has represented since 2015 last week, in the after his departure as prime minister.

Starmer saw his majority more than halve at the last election from nearly 28,000 to 11,500 amid a challenge from the left. The Greens came third, with Starmer’s main competitor being Andrew Feinstein, a leftwing independent. In a boost to Polanski, Feinstein has since confirmed he would not stand, indicating that the Camden People’s Alliance, the group which emerged from his campaign, would most likely back the Greens.

Labour have further lost support to the Greens in the area since Starmer’s election. The Greens made gains on Camden council in the local elections in May, although they failed to take control of it. But recent missteps by Polanski have dented the Green leader’s popularity, while the replacement of Starmer with Andy Burnham has boosted Labour’s standing in the polls.

Abdi-Wali became the focus of unwanted attention last week when Reform’s Zia Yusuf suggested she was not British in a social media post that was described as “straightforward racism” by Labour.

Yusuf, Reform UK’s home affairs spokesperson, posted on X last week: “The frontrunner being foisted on the people of Holborn by Labour to replace the former prime minister Keir Starmer in our parliament was born in Somalia. Do you understand what’s happening?”

The Greens are planning to flood the constituency with volunteers, while Labour said all members of the cabinet were likely to campaign in the seat, with campaigners calling the first official weekend of the campaign the “Make Hope Win Weekend”.

Labour’s byelection campaign lead, Liam Conlon MP, said Abdi-Wali was a “fantastic local champion” with a strong delivery record on “revamping council homes, reducing homelessness, and tackling nuisance antisocial behaviour”. He added: “She will be a powerful progressive voice for Holborn and St Pancras to work alongside our Labour government to improve the lives for local people.

“Labour will run a positive campaign that brings people together and restores hope. I look forward to joining hundreds of members to campaign with Sagal over the coming weeks.”