Holborn and St Pancras by election results: Zack Polanski beaten by Labour

Filed 48m ago · Via The Telegraph · The Buffoon Desk

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Comic Plodding

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: anonymous · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons

Zack Polanski faces calls to resign as Green Party leader after losing the Holborn and St Pancras by-election to Labour's Sagal Abdi-Wali by 3,364 votes. The Greens took 32.7 percent of the vote to Labour's 45 percent, with the Conservatives and Reform UK trailing far behind.

The campaign was dogged by an anti-Semitism controversy after party conference delegates backed a motion defining Zionism as racism. Vivien Lichtenstein of the Jewish Greens said Polanski should quit, criticizing him for not intervening in the debate and for the party's claim that he had consulted Jewish members beforehand.

Polanski said Friday he would have voted against the motion, while opposing its call for a one-state solution but agreeing with its 'substance.' Former party leader Jonathan Bartley separately condemned what he called the 'toxicity of the Green Party brand' under Polanski's tenure, citing a string of controversies since May's local elections.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

A second-place finish with a third of the vote doesn't usually get a leader run out of town, but add an unresolved fight over a conference motion and suddenly the knives come out fast. Saying you would have voted against something after the vote already happened is the political equivalent of telling the vet the dog started it. The Greens can debate Zionism all they like, but they might also ask why their own leader needed a by-election loss to find his position.

Source: Read the original at The Telegraph → Scored: Comic Plodding · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0