Labour's by-election candidate runs Camden Council. In May the Greens finished 18 votes short in her own ward. What happens to the council if she wins.

Labour’s candidate in the Holborn and St Pancras by-election is the leader of Camden Council.

Updated 10 October: she won the by-election with 12,292 votes to Zack Polanski’s 8,928. The full result and what it means for the council.

Councillor Sagal Abdi-Wali has run the council since May. She is now standing for the Commons seat Sir Keir Starmer gave up on 1 September. Polling day is Thursday 8 October.

Nominations close at 4pm on Tuesday 15 September, and the official candidate list follows at 5pm the same day. Every confirmed deadline is in our report on the notice of election.

Her selection puts an unusual question on the ballot paper. Camden’s most senior elected politician is asking one part of the borough to send her somewhere else. This page sets out who she is on the public record, what her campaign promises against what the council’s own documents say, and what would happen to the council if she wins.

Who she is, on the council’s own record

Camden’s own councillor register, checked on 14 September, records:

  • Ward: Camden Square, one of the ten Camden wards inside the constituency
  • Party: Labour
  • Title: Leader of the Council
  • Committees: chairs Cabinet, and sits on full Council, the Health and Wellbeing Board and three Audit and Corporate Governance sub-committees
  • Outside bodies: Central London Forward and London Councils’ Leaders’ Committee
  • Ward surgeries: Maiden Lane Community Centre on the second Friday of the month, and the Lulworth Tower TMO room on the Agar Grove Estate on the fourth Friday, both 3pm to 4pm

(Councillor Sagal Abdi-Wali, London Borough of Camden)

She became leader on 20 May 2026. Camden’s announcement that day says she was first elected as a councillor in 2022 and had been Cabinet Member for Better Homes. It quotes her saying: “Camden has been my home for 35 years. It is the place that gave my family sanctuary, that welcomed us, and that has shaped so much of who I am, what I stand for and what inspired my commitment to public service.” (Camden Council, 20 May 2026)

Her campaign website says she came to Camden as a child refugee in the 1990s after fleeing war in Somalia, and that she is the first Black woman to lead the borough. The site carries the legal imprint required on election material: promoted by Larry Culhane on behalf of Sagal Abdi-Wali, both at 130 Euston Road, NW1 2AY. (Meet Sagal Abdi-Wali, read 14 September 2026)

Labour has published no dated statement about the selection on its own website, and Camden Council has published nothing about its leader standing. The council’s newsroom carries one by-election item, the voting information release of 11 September.

What the campaign promises, and what the record says

Two of her three stated priorities point at things Camden has already published, so they can be checked.

“Sagal secured £670 million for council housing.” The figure is real and it is Camden’s. The council’s Housing Investment Strategy 2025 to 2030 says the Housing Asset Management Strategy “sets out the Council’s investment priorities over the next 5-years and sets a plan to invest £670m in its homes”.

Three things follow from the wording, and they matter:

  • it is a five-year capital plan for Camden’s existing stock, not money won from outside. Camden is a landlord with more than 22,000 social rented homes
  • the work it covers is repair and safety: the strategy notes that 9 per cent of council homes do not meet the government’s Decent Homes Standard
  • the strategy period starts in 2025, before she became leader in May 2026. She held the housing portfolio as Cabinet Member for Better Homes before that

“She will support the regeneration of Camley Street.” That scheme already has planning permission. Camden’s Planning Committee granted consent on 29 January 2026, and the council’s own account of it gives:

  • 401 new homes
  • almost half at social rents for families on the housing register, or intermediate rents for key workers
  • more than 350,000 sq ft of employment space
  • more than 1,000 jobs and training opportunities, ringfenced for local people
  • Ballymore and Lateral as the development partners
  • first homes expected to be ready by late 2030

(Camden Council, 30 January 2026)

Her third priority is homelessness. The campaign page says she “will back Andy Burnham’s commitment to ensure that people experiencing homelessness have a route off the streets”. It gives no Camden figure or target.

Planning decisions in the borough, including schemes like this one, are covered on our Camden planning page.

The Greens finished 18 votes short in her own ward

The last time voters in these wards were asked anything was 7 May 2026. The result in Camden Square was close.

Camden Square, 7 May 2026 Party Votes
Sagal Abdi-Wali (elected) Labour 890
Tricia Leman (elected) Labour 848
Helen Doyle Green 830
Adam Haswell Green 687
Benjamin Newman Liberal Democrat 164
Michael Mickey Britton Independent 162
Oliver Conrad Pearce Reform UK 162
Juan Ojeda-Sanchez Reform UK 151
Roger Freeman Conservative 119
Samel Tomas Liberal Democrat 106
Jamie Webb Conservative 93

Turnout was 36.89 per cent. The second Labour seat was held by 18 votes. (Camden Square ward 2026 results)

That was not a one-off. Across the ten wards voting on 8 October, the Greens outpolled Labour in two of them, and took all six of those wards’ seats in May.

Bar chart comparing the leading Labour and Green candidate in each of the ten Camden wards inside the Holborn and St Pancras constituency at the May 2026 council elections. The Greens led in Holborn and Covent Garden, 1,271 to 1,035, and in Regent's Park, 1,138 to 973. Labour led everywhere else, by 60 votes in Camden Square and 64 in Bloomsbury. No Green candidate stood in King's Cross or St Pancras and Somers Town.
Graphic by Camden Today
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Wards here elect two or three members and the parties ran different numbers of candidates, so the fair comparison is each party’s best-placed candidate. On that measure Labour led in eight of the ten. The Greens did not stand at all in King’s Cross or in St Pancras and Somers Town, where the Camden People’s Alliance took a seat instead. Primrose Hill ward is split between two constituencies and only one of its polling districts votes in this by-election.

The Green Party’s candidate on 8 October is its national leader, Zack Polanski. The party announced him on 11 September and said he was chosen at a local hustings the night before. (Green Party, 11 September 2026)

The most recent real test was smaller and more recent still. Regent’s Park ward held a council by-election on 9 July. Labour’s Nanouche Umeadi took it with 576 votes to the Green candidate Alice Amelia Brown’s 482, in a ward where the Greens had won all three seats nine weeks earlier. Turnout fell from 35.12 per cent in May to 21.93 per cent. (Regent’s Park ward 2026 by-election results)

Camden Liberal Democrats had still not named a candidate when we checked their by-election page on 14 September. There is no candidate list until the returning officer publishes one at 5pm on Tuesday, and we will not print one from party announcements or other newspapers before then.

What happens to the council if she wins

Nothing happens automatically, and she has said nothing publicly about it either way.

Camden’s constitution, in the version dated 19 August 2026, sets out the position. Article 7.03 says the Leader holds office from the day of appointment by Council until the annual meeting after the next council elections, “unless the Leader is removed” by a no confidence vote, “is disqualified (pursuant to a standards investigation) or resigns”. Article 7.04 adds that if the office of Leader is vacant, the Deputy Leader “must act in their place until the appointment of a new Leader by the Council”. Camden’s Deputy Leader is Councillor Adam Harrison of Bloomsbury, who is also Cabinet Member for Safer Communities. (Article 7, The Cabinet)

There is no rule forcing the issue. Section 80 of the Local Government Act 1972 lists who is disqualified from being a councillor: holders of paid council posts, people under bankruptcy or debt relief restrictions, people sentenced to three months or more in the past five years, and people disqualified for corrupt or illegal practices. Being a Member of Parliament is not on the list.

If she did give up the council seat, the steps are fixed:

  • a councillor resigns by written notice to the council’s proper officer, and it takes effect the moment the notice is received (section 84)
  • a by-election must then be held within 35 days of two local government electors giving the proper officer written notice of the vacancy (section 89)

Camden Square has done this before. The ward held a by-election on 5 September 2024, won by Patricia Leman with 465 votes on a turnout of 16.35 per cent. (Camden Council, 6 September 2024)

What it means for you

  • The candidate list is not official until 5pm on Tuesday 15 September. Treat anything before that as a party announcement, not a ballot paper.
  • You must be registered by 11.59pm on Tuesday 22 September to vote on 8 October. Nothing else matters if you miss it.
  • Nine of Camden’s twenty wards are in Hampstead and Highgate and have no vote in this election. The full ward lists are here.
  • If you live in Camden Square ward, Councillor Abdi-Wali is still your councillor and still holds the two monthly surgeries listed above. The council’s electoral services team is on 020 7974 4444.
  • The MP this election returns does not run bin rounds, parking or council tax. Camden Council does, and our pages on bin collection days, council tax bands and parking in Camden cover those.

We will report the statement of persons nominated when the returning officer publishes it on Tuesday.

Sources