When he resigned as Prime Minister, Keir Starmer told the BBC: “I’m going to stay as an MP”. Inevitably, he’s now announced that he’s not staying on after all, which means a by-election in his Holborn and St Pancras constituency.

This is a distraction that Andy Burnham — frantically preparing for PMQs, party conference and the Budget — could do without. Arguably, Starmer should have waited to see if there’s going to be an early general election, which would have allowed him to step down without fuss. But perhaps serving at the convenience of the man who ousted him wasn’t Starmer’s top priority.

So just how safe is this seat for Labour? On the face of it, very. As recently as 2019, Starmer enjoyed a thumping majority of 27,763 votes. But in 2024, something rather odd happened. Despite Labour’s landslide victory in the country as a whole, Starmer’s personal majority slumped to just 11,572.

Normally, the high profile that comes from being a party leader helps boost an MP’s performance in his or her constituency. But in Holborn and St Pancras — along with other parts of London — the Left-wing electorate has fragmented. In 2024, Starmer lost votes both to the third-placed Greens and to the runner-up, Andrew Feinstein — a Left-wing independent with a significant grassroots organisation behind him.

Now Feinstein is calling on “all progressive forces in Holborn & St. Pancras” to unite around a candidate who is “the antithesis of everything that Starmer stands for.”

Meanwhile, the Greens are hinting that their candidate may be none other than party leader Zack Polanski. Not only is north London his home turf, but he also needs to get back on the front foot. On his first anniversary as leader, the inconvenient truth is that Green support is now back down to single figures — and that his personal ratings are deep underwater.

So this by-election matters — and not just for the Greens. Labour needs to show that the Burnham effect extends further south than Greater Manchester, especially when it comes to winning back disaffected Left-wing voters. If someone like Feinstein or Polanski runs Labour close in Holborn and St Pancras — let alone scores a shock victory — the upbeat narrative surrounding the PM will be seriously challenged.

Anxious Burnhamites can steady their nerves with the thought that the constituency is adjacent to, but not within, the most favourable parts of London for the Green Party. For the wards that make up Holborn and St Pancras, the Greens made gains at the local election in May, but still came a clear second to Labour. As for the big drop in Labour’s majority at the last general election, that was in part a reaction to the conflict in Gaza, which is now less prominent in the news or on London streets. Add to that the recent shift in the national polling picture and Labour should be home and dry.

But there is one cloud on the horizon. Last year, Burnham said that “we’ve got to get beyond this thing of being in hock to the bond market.” This week, long-term public borrowing costs reached a 28-year high. With a budget due next month, his Government will come under intense pressure to rein in public spending, with welfare cuts the most obvious target.

And so Starmer has presented his successor with what could be a nightmare by-election: a unified Left-wing campaign against Labour austerity.

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Peter Franklin is Associate Editor of UnHerd. He was previously a policy advisor and speechwriter on environmental and social issues.

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