Zack Polanski has confirmed he will put his name forward for selection as the Green Party candidate in the Holborn and St Pancras by-election.
Speaking to the Camden New Journal today, Polanski said: “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.” The decision over Polanski’s selection is now up to the Camden Green Party, with the process due to be completed by the end of next week. However, the New Statesman understands that the party is split over whether Polanski is the right candidate.
On Tuesday (1 September), Keir Starmer announced he would be standing down from the seat, triggering a by-election that is expected to take place later this year. Polanski has long said that should a parliamentary seat in London become available, he would put himself forward as a candidate. When Polanski was criticised by the Labour Party for not going for selection in the Gorton and Denton by-election in February, a Green Party spokesperson said: “Zack’s waiting for the by-election in Holborn and St Pancras.”
One ally of Polanski said: “Zack is the only path to victory [for the Greens].” They explained that as the leader of the party, and with strong name recognition, he is the party’s best chance of winning in Holborn and St Pancras.
Another senior Green source, who has been sceptical of Polanski’s leadership, also backed his candidacy for the seat. They pointed out that “it will be difficult for Zack not to stand after a Green Party spokesman said this ahead of the Gorton and Denton by-election. He should stand; it really would risk being cowardly, this time, of him not to.”
But the New Statesman understands that several sources within the Camden Green Party this move is a mistake. They pointed to the 9 July Regent’s Park council by-election (a ward within the Holborn and St Pancras constituency) in which the Greens lost a local authority seat to Labour. That poll was called following the disqualification of one of the Green candidates, Abu Naser, because he is a teacher at a council-run secondary school. Naser has since left the party. Sources within the Camden Greens believe the Greens lost the trust of the local Bengali community following his exclusion, and that many of those voters backed the independent candidate – Mohammad Junayd Khan – instead.
A senior source within the Camden Green Party told the New Statesman that Polanski would not be met favourably if he is perceived to have been “parachuted in” by the national party. They pointed out that Polanski’s patch is known to be Hackney, and that he does not currently live in the Holborn and St Pancras constituency. The source said: “Those of us with considerable campaigning experience in the constituency know that Zack is not the right candidate here. The route to a Green win in this constituency lies through global majority voters, in particular the Bengali community, who really showed up for the Greens in the May local elections.”
A source within the Camden Greens argued that the best candidate to unite the progressive vote is Andrew Feinstein, who ran against Starmer as an independent in 2024, and called for him to be admitted to the Green Party and permitted to run as a candidate. Feinstein ran on a left-wing, anti-war and pro-Gaza platform in 2024, coming second behind Starmer with 7,312 votes (Starmer won 18,884 votes). He was involved in the early stages of the founding of Your Party, though he left it before its inaugural conference in November 2025 and is now part of the Camden People’s Alliance, which collaborated with the Green Party in the borough ahead of the May local elections. The Green source said: “Zack, who isn’t local and doesn’t understand those dynamics, cannot heal that rift. Andrew Feinstein is by far the best placed to bring those communities back into the fold.”
As Feinstein is not currently a member of the Green Party, this would require a special dispensation from the party’s ruling body – the Green Party Council – as candidates must have been a member of the party for more than a year at the time of running for selection. Green Party members in Camden would also need to vote to select Feinstein as their preferred candidate. Feinstein has not yet commented on whether he intends to run, although he said in a post on X that progressive forces in Holborn and St Pancras should “unite in order to deliver an MP who represents us”.
In a statement on Wednesday (2 September) to mark his first anniversary as party leader, Polanski described the by-election as a “referendum on ending rip-off Britain”. He added: “We will announce our candidate in due course and they will set out an exciting agenda for the deep change our country needs.”
[Further reading: Andy Burnham’s real work is just beginning]
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