By Alistair Smout and Ben Makori
LONDON, Oct 7 (Reuters) – Andy Burnham needs to win over voters like tech worker Dani Arbid in a by-election on Thursday if he is to fend off a national threat to his Labour Party from the Greens — and the early signs are encouraging for Britain’s new prime minister.
The vote for a parliamentary seat in the inner London electoral district of Holborn and St Pancras, made vacant by the resignation of former Prime Minister Keir Starmer, is a first test of whether Burnham can restore voters’ faith in Labour, which saw its popularity among left-wing voters plunge over the war in Gaza.
Many, like Arbid, turned instead to the Greens, helping them to their strongest result ever in local elections in May. Now, he says he is undecided on how he will vote in Thursday’s so-called by-election but welcomed Burnham’s tougher messaging on Israel and his more ambitious approach to ties with the European Union.
“It’s very important to read the room, which I think the current Labour government is doing a lot better job at,” Arbid, 38, told Reuters. “There is still room for Labour to kind of claw back some of those losses for sure.”
LABOUR TIPPED TO WIN BY-ELECTION
Unlike the national picture, where Nigel Farage’s Reform UK poses a serious challenge to Burnham, the by-election is mainly a contest between Labour and the Greens, with thousands of activists from both parties out canvassing in recent weeks.
Burnham hopes to show he can consolidate the left-of-centre vote, strengthening his efforts to take on a British right now split between Reform UK and the Conservatives. But the by-election also offers him a chance to rob the Greens of the momentum they have built up under new leader Zack Polanski.
Polanski himself is the Greens’ candidate in Holborn and St Pancras but Labour’s Sagal Abdi-Wali, a local council leader, is tipped to hold the seat for the governing party.
Green gains in areas of London contributed to Labour’s dismal local election results in May, which helped set in train a process that culminated on July 20 with Starmer’s resignation and his replacement by Burnham.
Since then, however, Labour has rebounded in national opinion polls, while the Greens have suffered setbacks.
At a conference last weekend, Green Party members voted to class Zionism as a form of racism, drawing criticism from British Jewish groups, Israel and even some Green lawmakers. Polanski, who is Jewish, did not take part in the vote.
Burnham’s government, which has taken a more critical approach towards Israel and banned the import of goods from West Bank settlements, said the Greens had overstepped a line.
On Camden High Street, an area of London brimming with market stalls and popular with musicians, artists and tourists, Kamran Ahmed, a local resident who works in AI, said Polanski could have managed the issues raised at conference better.
But on a local level he said the Greens had something new to offer, echoing frustration heard around the country that the previously dominant Conservative and Labour parties no longer have the answers.
“Nothing is set in stone, but some of the mainstream parties have over-promised and under-delivered… If you take an area like Camden, it could benefit from some of the fresher thinking that the Green Party offers,” Ahmed said.
Damian Lyons Lowe, head of pollster Survation, said the seat was one of the Greens’ top targets, and that governments rarely did well at by-elections. But the Greens’ anti-Starmer message, which resonated so well in May, was being tested by Burnham.
“Burnham has made direct appeals to Green-minded voters in terms of some of the things they care about,” he told Reuters.
“The Burnham vibe check is very different to the Starmer-led Labour government, and that’s a problem for the Green Party.”
(Reporting by Alistair Smout and Ben Makori; Editing by Kate Holton and Gareth Jones)
