‘It’s all about housing’: What are voters talking about on the campaign trail in Holborn and St Pancras?

Emerging from St Pancras train station, you wouldn’t know there is a by-election tomorrow. Swathes of people rush to catch trains, shops carry on as usual and there isn’t a campaign poster in sight – neither Green nor Labour. Further into the more residential areas, like Kentish Town, the odd Green or Labour poster starts to appear, but even there, people aren’t necessarily eager to talk politics or even aware of whether – or how – they will vote. 

Pitching up at the Greens’ canvassing base for the day, a patch of grass in Argyle Square Gardens, around 20 Green Party activists and staff members gathered on Sunday afternoon. Talia Ellis, an organiser for the Green Party indicated that activists had been coming and going all day, doing their bit to get the party’s leader Zack Polanski elected as the area’s MP.

One activist told me “We’re in it to win it” but wouldn’t say whether they thought Polanski could beat Labour’s candidate, Sagal Abdi-Wali. Ellis showed me some of the Greens’ internal polling on the upcoming by-election. In a head-to-head between Labour and the Greens, the polling puts Labour on 52% and the Greens on 48%. Ellis said that the Greens are focused on targeting 30% of the undecideds in the hope that they can close that four-point gap. 

What wasn’t clear was how many undecided voters the Greens would actually need to win over – and how high the turnout would need to be – to close in on Labour’s lead. Nor is it clear how many undecideds may ultimately vote Labour or not vote at all, but just haven’t yet said so.

Beyond the activists’ optimism and the internal polling, belies an awareness, however, that a win for the Greens in this Labour stronghold is a long shot. But if Labour does win, voters’ opinions of Abdi-Wali’s record within Camden do not put her off to a positive start. 

The thorn in Camden Labour and Abdi-Wali’s side is housing. A Camden councillor since 2022, Abdi-Wali became cabinet member for housing in May 2024 and rose to become council leader in May of this year. Just months after, the Housing Ombudsman carried out a special investigation into Camden council’s housing stock and found it had a 91% maladministration rate for repairs (compared to the 73% national average) and 86% for complaint handling.

“It’s all about housing,” Jacob Harwood, a Green member in London, said, recounting that lots of people have raised issues with housing repairs on the doorstep.

Sharmen Rahman, a former Labour councillor and now a Green Party member in Leicester, said that on previous canvassing sessions “All everyone talked about was housing. There is a real palpable sense of upset around housing.”

“Disrepair and mould is one of the things that comes up,” she said. 

As an example, she said she spoke to one man who was recovering from cancer who told her he had been made to move out of his flat two or three times due to mould and treatment for mould. “It’s still not resolved,” Rahman said.

Rahman acknowledged that a lot of housing issues are “structural”, including the sell-off of council homes under Right to Buy and the proliferation of private landlords.

Asked what Polanski would do to improve housing in Camden if he became an MP, Rahman said he has called for rent controls, cancelling Right to Buy and exclusively building council housing, rather than affordable housing. 

She added that “a lot of people were quite miffed to hear that Sagal was made leader of the council and now she’s going off to become an MP”. 

On the doorstep, Rahman said several voters were “surprised” to hear she might leave her job as council leader, adding: “A lot of people didn’t know she was the candidate.”

Speaking to Left Foot Forward at Green Party conference last Saturday, former Green Party leader Natalie Bennett said she thinks the Greens will win the ‘working class’ vote in Holborn and St Pancras.

“We are going to win the council estates, I have no doubt about that,” she said.

Bennett knows the parliamentary seat well. She stood as a parliamentary candidate in Holborn and St Pancras twice, in 2010 and 2015, and also ran as a council candidate in Regents Park and Somer’s Town wards, but was not elected.

The Green peer said that lots of people living on council estates are “really really fed up with Labour both Starmer’s Labour and they understand that the candidate was a Starmerite Labour person”. 

She added: “Also they’re really fed up with the council, particularly in terms of the council’s management of housing and she used to be the cabinet member for housing.”

Whether the Greens can get a high turnout among voters in the council estates remains to be seen, Bennett admits. But she believes Labour’s policies have affected people on council estates far more than the middle classes, adding: “So they’re a lot angrier.”

While the Greens say Polanski still has a fighting chance of winning, a polling projection has indicated that Labour could hold onto the seat by some margin. A forecast by Stats for Lefties based on local election results and national polls, predicts that Labour will achieve 39% of the vote, while the Greens will get 32%. 

Furthermore, polling guru John Curtice told Left Foot Forward that it will be “a substantial challenge” for the Greens to win. In reference to the Burnham bounce, he said: “the Labour party is a lot more popular than it was on May 7, and we know that the Greens are less popular. Therefore it becomes quite a substantial challenge.”

Regardless of whether the Greens’ message on Abdi-Wali and Camden Labour’s record on housing cuts through and enables Polanski to pick up votes, it does indicate that some locals are frustrated with Labour on this core issue and want an MP who will stand up for their rights on housing and beyond.  

Sagal Abdi-Wali has been approached for comment. 

Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward