UK Greens leader Polanski fights by-election after Zionism row

Londoners voted in a special poll Thursday in which Zack Polanski, leader of Britain's left-wing Greens, was bidding to grab a parliamentary seat despite a row with Israel after his party defined Zionism as racism.

The by-election to represent the Holborn and St Pancras constituency in the UK capital after former UK leader Keir Starmer stood down is also an early test of Labour Prime Minister Andy Burnham's popularity.

Labour has held the seat continuously since its creation in 1983 and the contest is a two-horse race with the Green Party, which has enjoyed a surge in membership since Polanski became its leader in September 2025.

The 43-year-old former actor and hypnotherapist has moved the party leftwards and made it avidly pro-Palestinian, capitalising on anger at the centre-left Labour government's stance on the Israel-Hamas war under Starmer.

But Burnham has adopted a tougher position on Israel since succeeding the more centrist Starmer as premier in July and has sought to blunt the Greens' rise by laying out a more left-wing vision for the UK.

Labour candidate Sagal Abdi-Wali, who arrived in Britain as a child refugee in the 1990s after fleeing war in Somalia and now leads the local council, is expected to be declared the winner when the result is announced in the early hours of Friday.

"I feel with Andy Burnham getting in there's a bit more hope in the country," 31-year-old support worker Stanley Armour told AFP outside a polling station.

"It's interesting to see how tight it (the result) will actually be."

Joe Selby, a 26-year-old driver, told AFP that housing, the cost of living, Gaza and the "character and honesty" of the candidates were important issues for him.

Polanski, who is Jewish, was barred from Israel this week after Green party members backed a motion saying Zionism would be "treated as any other form of racism".

The text also voiced support for the establishment of a "single democratic Palestinian State in all of historic Palestine".

It was widely condemned by mainstream UK parties, British Jewish groups and Israel's government, which called it "a clear antisemitic text".

- Labour stronghold -

The motion, passed by 1,022 votes to 813 at the party's conference on Sunday, exposed divisions within the Greens, with four of its five MPs publicly rejecting the move.

Polanski -- currently a locally elected official on the London Assembly, which scrutinises the work of the city's mayor -- skipped the vote and has not said if he supports it.

The Greens won a sensational parliamentary by-election victory near Manchester in February and made big gains at local polls in May, particularly in London.

But Polanski's popularity has since taken a hit, polls show, following several missteps, including over an unpaid council tax bill and criticism he made of police officers.

At the 2024 general election, Starmer won Holborn with almost 49 percent of the vote, with the Greens coming third on 10.4 percent.

An independent candidate who finished second with 19 percent is backing Polanski this time, meaning the result could be close.

Starmer announced last month he was leaving parliament after Labour MPs forced him out of Downing Street and made Burnham Britain's seventh prime minister since 2016.