Starmer has caused the new PM a headache by resigning, writes Jonas Marvin. [GETTY]
Even in resignation, Keir Starmer is a liability for the Labour Party. One of the most unpopular Prime Ministers in British history, the former Labour leader had transformed an admittedly shallow Parliamentary majority into a succession of by-election defeats, shrinking municipal power, and a perpetual spate of Reform UK polling leads.
Just as Andy Burnham has inaugurated a new period of Labour resurgence by distinguishing himself from his predecessor, operating as a far savvier politician, prioritising Mamdani-style affect and vibes, and even, in a limited way, introducing some cost-of-living reforms, Starmer has caused the new PM a headache by resigning. He will no longer serve as the Parliamentary representative for Holborn and St. Pancras, a seat he has held for eleven years.
Starmer, the man who backed Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians to the hilt and sought to strip the disabled of benefits and pensioners of winter fuel payments, ended his Parliamentary career after six weeks on a summer wage. Putting a damper on Burnham’s hard launch, he also opened himself up to a career that does not involve him declaring his earnings. Starmer’s resignation is a final parting shot to his successor.
This by-election is the first substantive test of the new PM’s wager to rebuild an electoral coalition which binds together significant parts of the Northern electorate with Labour’s disloyal, leftwards-moving voter base in the larger, metropolitan cities.
Starmer’s resignation, as venal and self-obsessed as his time in office, might symbolise a potential challenge to this ambition. Formally, it shouldn’t. The Burnham poll bounce hasn’t been enormous, but it has been significant. He has dragged Labour back to the top from oblivion.
With the opposition in disarray, as Farage faces a litany of financial scandals and Zack Polanski’s Greens struggle to find their feet against a more nimble Labour leader, there is an argument to say that Burnham’s Labour should be commanding far larger polling leads.
There should not be any comfort walking into this by-election, however. The Holborn and St. Pancras constituency, like many London areas, is an almost Dickensian tale of two cities. Sandwiched between London Euston and King’s Cross station is the historic working-class Somers Town neighbourhood, just as behind the leafy Victorian and Georgian terraces of Kentish Town and Camden lies a legion of working-class estates.
This seat, in many ways that have been actively papered over in the national political conversation over the past decade, is a classic Labour constituency. It brings together a multiracial working class with a professional middle class that has grown in size both as a component of the area and of Labour’s electoral base.
The Labour Party will hope that the Burnham charm offensive is enough to win the seat, supplementing its superior ground game. Of the Labour candidates on offer, there is a real estate developer, the former leader of Haringey council, and a spate of other councillors in the race. The favourite is likely Sagal Abdi-Wali, the current Camden council leader, former Constituency Labour Party chair, and a Somali refugee.
The New Statesmen’s Ben Walker in a Britain Predicts poll has Labour with a thin 5% lead over the Greens in Starmer’s former constituency. Whilst this is certainly the poll with the most generous tilt towards the eco-populists, the prize for the Greens is clear.
Zack Polanski, who has confidently declared that he will run for the seat so long as he wins the support of the local party, has an opportunity to send a shockwave through London Labour and build upon the Greens’ growing clout across the capital, having won control of five London councils in the recent local elections.
Without the jeopardy of worrying about the seat falling to either the Conservatives or Reform UK, Polanski can confidently claim, as Russell Warfield has argued on PoliticsJOE, that if you want to make good on Andy Burnham’s promise to end neoliberalism, getting another Green into Parliament will be a far better means for making good on that than simply getting another Labour MP elected.
To achieve this, the Greens would need to capitalise on their growing inroads in wards across the constituency whilst also finding firmer footing as they try to pivot against a more capable, Janus-faced Labour leader.
Keir Starmer’s last act as a politician could also be his final gift to the Green Party, handing them an opportunity to regain their momentum and position themselves as the effective opposition to Andy Burnham’s muddied attempt to revive Labour’s fortunes.
Jonas Marvin is the author of forthcoming The Breaking of the English Working Class, due out for Verso Books in August 2026. He also cohosts Life of the Party podcast and blogs at Marx’s Dream Journal.
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