Green Party Zack Polanski has confirmed that he will run in the Holborn and St Pancras by-election.

Polanski had previously said he would stand in a by-election if a seat became vacant in London and has now announced he is ready to fight one.

The high-profile contest has been triggered by the ex-prime minister Keir Starmer stepping down as an MP earlier this week.

As reported by the Camden New Journal, Polanski said he was “excited” by the prospect of representing Holborn and St Pancras in Parliament.

He told the local newspaper: “I have lived and worked in this community over many years, I know it well and I love it.”

“It represents so many of the things that make London so special. I am so excited by the prospect of representing this place in Parliament.”

Polanski added: “We know that the Greens can win here, and by electing me, voters will have someone who will always fight their corner – never scared of big donors or the party whip.”

The Green party leader said that “too often Labour has stood up for corporations and big money”, adding “I will stand up for people struggling to pay their bills”. 

At the 2024 general election, Andrew Feinstein stood as an independent and came second behind Starmer with almost 19% of the vote.

It is unclear whether Feinstein plans to stand again. However, Polanski’s announcement suggests he may not, given that he teamed up with the Greens and Your Party at last year’s local elections to avoid splitting the vote.

LFF has contacted Feinstein for comment. 

Labour has yet to confirm its candidate. However, there is speculation that journalist Paul Mason, who previously backed Jeremy Corbyn before becoming a staunch supporter of Starmer’s project, could run as the party’s candidate.

Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward

The post Zack Polanski confirms he will stand in by-election for Keir Starmer’s seat appeared first on Left Foot Forward: Leading the UK's progressive debate.

The Greens have hinted that party leader Zack Polanski may intend on standing in Holborn and St Pancras, after Keir Starmer announced his resignation as an MP.

According to Sky News journalist Sam Coates, a Green source has indicated that Polanski is weighing up standing.

A Green Party Spokesman told Coates: “Zack has always made it clear he would like to be a London MP. London has been his home for over 20 years’.”

Polanski has been a London Assembly member since 2021.

While Holborn and St Pancras is a Labour stronghold, the Greens did well in the wards that make up the London constituency at May’s local elections.

Camden Council, part of Starmer’s constituency, lost 17 seats in the local elections held in May while the Greens gained 10.

Earlier today, Keir Starmer, who was ousted as prime minister by Andy Burnham in July, announced that he would be step down as Holborn and St Pancras’ MP.

In a statement to the Camden New Journal newspaper, Starmer said it had been a “huge honour and privilege” to represent the constituency for 11 years but he would now turn his focus to “international affairs”.

Starmer did not say what is next role will be, but said he plans to focus on defence, security, trade, technology and combating violence against women and girls.

Restore Britain’s Rupert Lowe has said his party will stand in the by-election, which will likely split Reform’s vote.

A Holborn and St Pancras constituency projection estimates the following vote share:

Labour: 39.6% (-9.3)

Green: 18.9% (+8.4)

Independent* (Andrew Feinstein): 14.0% (-7.5)

Reform: 12.6% (+6.5)

Conservative: 6.9% (-0.3)

Lib Dem: 6.4% (+0.6)

Sienna Rodgers, deputy editor at the House Magazine, has noted that Andrew Feinstein, who stood as an independent at the 2024 general election and came second with almost 19% of the vote, set up a party – the Camden People’s Alliance – last year and coordinated with the Greens and Your Party at the local elections.

Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward

The post Greens hint that Zack Polanski might stand in Keir Starmer’s seat appeared first on Left Foot Forward: Leading the UK's progressive debate.

Former Prime Minister and Labour leader Keir Starmer has announced that he is standing down as a Labour MP, saying it is the “right time” for him to leave the Commons.

Following his decision to resign as Labour Party leader, there had been much speculation about Sir Keir’s future, and he has told his constituency’s local newspaper, the Camden New Journal, that it was the ‘right time’ to leave the House of Commons and concentrate on new work on international affairs.

The MP for Holborn and St Pancras told the New Journal that he was ready to “pass the baton to a successor”, adding: “It has been a huge honour and privilege to represent the best constituency in the country and to have taken over from Frank Dobson, who was such a great constituency MP and a member of the last Labour government. I will now focus on other things and that will be international affairs including defence, security, trade and technology in a fast-changing world.

“I will also continue, as I have done for a long time now with others, work on combating violence against women and girls; that is an issue that matters to me hugely. It’s work I started before I became an MP and it’s work I’m keen to continue after I’m an MP. So international affairs on the one hand, and continuing my work on violence against women and girls on the other.”

Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward

The post Keir Starmer announces he is standing down as an MP appeared first on Left Foot Forward: Leading the UK's progressive debate.

The Labour Party lost more than a fifth of its members last year, as support for Keir Starmer’s government took a hit with MPs rebelling against welfare cuts and a series of policy U-turns.

According to figures published by the Electoral Commission yesterday, the party’s membership figures dropped by 20% last year, to their lowest level since 2014.

Labour recorded 333,235 members at the end of 2024, and 264,754 in December 2025.

The sharp fall could bring the Green Party within reach of overtaking Labour’s membership numbers. In May, the Greens said their membership had reached 230,000.

A spokesperson for the Greens said its membership figures had “quadrupled” in the last year since Zack Polanski became leader. The party had 186,441 members at the end of December last year.

Mainstream, the centre-left group within Labour, which is backed by Andy Burnham, said that the figures were “horrifying” but that the situation could be turned around. 

In a post on X, the group said: “The decline in Labour’s membership is horrifying – but it needn’t be terminal. 

“By building a culture and pioneering new practices to realise pluralism, internal democracy and participation, we can rebuild our movement.

“Labour’s new leadership must make this a priority. To transform the country, we must transform Labour.”

Veteran MP Diane Abbott, who has recently been readmitted to the Labour party after a year-long suspension under Starmer, reacted to the figures, arguing that they show Starmer and his former chief of staff abandoned “genuine Labour values”. 

Abbott wrote: “Starmer and McSweeney seemed to loathe genuine Labour values and many Labour members. It turns out the feeling was mutual.”

A Labour Party spokesperson said: “The Labour Party is proud to be powered by our dedicated Party members and supporters who fight day after day for Labour victories to change the country for the better.

“With Andy Burnham’s leadership, Labour is bringing back hope. Since he became Prime Minister less than three weeks ago, he’s delivered immediate action to cut bills, move power out of Westminster into every postcode in Britain, and made clear that his government will change politics so it is firmly focused on problem solving, not point scoring.”

Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward

The post Labour’s membership figures plummeted last year under Keir Starmer appeared first on Left Foot Forward: Leading the UK's progressive debate.

Monday 20 July 2026.  Keir Starmer’s final speech as Prime Minister.

Just two years after Labour’s landslide general election victory, when the applause that wrapped him tight, lifted him high and carried him over the threshold of No.10 was so deafening, he should really have been wearing ear defenders, Starmer’s time as Prime Minister, is over. 

Now, that applause, though congenial, respectful and polite, was noticeably a decibel or two quieter, serving only to let him go, drop him to the ground and to remind him to make his own way out.

Surely, not even in his worst of all nightmares could he had imagined his July 2024 bubble, so full of the public’s air of hope would deflate so quickly or that the ear-splitting applause that once threatened to deafen him, would have become a slow, if gentle, hand clap imploring him to go.

To have been the leader of a party that won 411 out of 650 parliamentary seats, (that’s 63.23% of them by the way), in a general election, and then just two years later to be the same leader who felt they had no other option but to resign, is really quite astonishing when you think about it.

But I guess, when many of those seats had been, metaphorically speaking, ‘ripped from the green benches’ and were being ‘hurled in the leader’s direction’, then better to resign and take refuge than to stand out in the open and be hit by one from row Z; does anybody remember Luton vs. Millwall from 1985?

Starmer made many a mistake, of that there is no doubt. 

But he also made many an achievement, particularly on the international stage, a stage it always seemed to me he was more comfortable performing on.

The history books will be kinder to him than his political opponents, some in the media and even some in the Labour Party itself, have been.  

The worst prime minister ever?  

No, not on your nelly.  Just look back at recent political history and take your pick.  

The most unpopular prime minister ever?  

Well, if the measure of unpopularity were based solely on the football team you support, in Starmer’s case Arsenal, then maybe so.  But it isn’t.

Being popular and unpopular cycle through time, you will always end up being both.  And if you’ll allow me to stick with a footballing analogy to make my point, just think of David Beckham against Argentina in World Cup ‘98 and the same David Beckham against Greece when qualifying for the World Cup of 2002.  

Chalk, cheese and a magnificent 93^rd minute equalizer.  The same player at a different time.

Would there have been a different time when Starmer was more popular?  Possibly. Probably. Almost certainly.  

The truth is we’ll never know and so, it will be left to a chat with your mates down the pub to decide.

Now wearing the ear defenders to protect against the thunderous applause, being held tight and lifted high across not one, but two thresholds: No.10 and No.10 North, is Andy Burnham.  

The King of the North has become the King of the Kingdom, a prime minister who wants to bring hope to every heart and good growth to every postcode.

In making those pronouncements he has set the high jump bar, high.  

Just a matter of months ago Burnham was Mayor of Greater Manchester and was blocked by the same Labour Party he now leads, from even being considered as a candidate, let alone standing to be an MP.  

Politics shifts fast and self-evidently; blockages can be shifted faster.  

Burnham has a vision and a direction for the country; a vision he will unfurl in the hope the country will like what they see and a direction he hopes the public will follow as he points the way ahead. 

His first instruction to end rough sleeping was authentically Labour and also authentically him. 

Removing VAT from energy bills and capping bus fares to help families, just a little bit, with the cost of living are indications as to which way he will move and signs as to whose side he is on, even if there were some snipes from the sidelines over whether or not it’s all been fully funded.

Change comes from making changes.

And when it comes to his cabinet, whilst many of the Starmer cabinet faces still remain, many more have had their cabinet seats removed.  Make no mistake, this is a Burnham cabinet, but there are still questions left searching for answers.  

Can this cabinet really change things for the better and quickly?

If familiar faces just appear in different places and with new job titles, will the public perceive them as being any different from what went before?

After all, even after the Titanic had hit the iceberg the band still played on.  And even if the musicians had decided to tune their instruments to improve the quality of their sound, the ship would still have sunk. 

And so, Burnham has to manage public perception through constant public delivery whilst at the same time looking out for icebergs dead ahead, no easy task and especially if you’ve forgotten your binoculars.   

When it comes to clearing that high jump bar, he’s got off to a promising start.

The crowd are encouragingly clapping as he runs in, his speed quickening and his stride lengthening as he prepares to launch himself over the bar.  

Let’s just hope he doesn’t fluff his Fosbury Flop.

The post Can Andy Burnham turn the government around? appeared first on Left Foot Forward: Leading the UK's progressive debate.