The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Week commencing 9th October 2026
The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Week commencing 9th October 2026
The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
So the battle of Holborn & St Pancras is over. Labour held the seat. The Greens did well and George Galloway’s intervention was a dismal failure. At the end of the day nothing surprised us. Labour was always the bookies’ favourite. Although their candidate was the lack-lustre leader of the local council, Sagal Abdi-Wali clearly benefited from the ‘Burnham bounce’ that has revived Labour’s fortunes across the country. She also had the full support of the Starmerite machine, built up over the years when the former premier held the seat, as well as the Blairite gang in the House of Commons who joined the local canvassing teams to get the traditional Labour vote out on the day. And on that day Labour held the seat with a comfortable majority – 13 points ahead of the nearest contender, the Green leader Zack Polanski.
The Greens, who were backed by the local Corbynistas, had high hopes. Some call them “Tories on bikes”, which is, perhaps, unfair as they are actually a liberal bourgeois trend that has largely sprung from the Liberal-Democrat milieu. In fact, Polanski’s political career began when he joined the Liberal Democrats in 2015.
In practice they have little to offer working people. Like the Liberal-Democrats they echo the social demands of the middle strata but they have little to offer working people beyond the usual platitudes these politicians routinely churn out at election time to get the vote. They trumpet their support for the Palestinians. They pose as social-democrats. They take their campaign, led by their flamboyant leader, to the streets. They secured a 22.4 per cent swing in their favour on Thursday. But it wasn’t enough to beat Labour.
The Corbynistas, in the form of the Camden People’s Alliance, backed Polanski. But George Galloway did not. The maverick former Labour MP who now leads the Workers Party of Britain from self-imposed exile in China and the Russian Federation, fought a ‘remote’ spoiler campaign against the Greens that would continue “unless the Greens make an offer we can’t refuse”. Although Galloway did not return to our shores to fight his corner his followers took up his call. But to no avail. Galloway got no more than a protest vote – 314 to be precise – that the also-rans fight over in these sorts of polls.
Count Binface was on holiday but the Loonies fielded Barmy Brunch, the man who wears a baked-bean balaclava, who got 87 votes. And we can all take comfort from the fact that the misnamed “Communist League” – a former Trotskyist sect that now rabidly supports the Zionist entity – got nine…