Reform UK have suffered another by-election disaster after they finished in fourth place in Holborn and St Pancras.
Everyone knew Reform weren’t going to get close to a win in the North London constituency which was always going to be a two horse race between Labour and the Greens.
This proved to be the case, as Camden Council leader Sagal Abdi-Wali won the seat for Labour with 12,292 votes (45.2%), ahead of the Green Party’s Zack Polanski who won 8.928 votes (32.8%).
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But Reform will have had one aim – finishing ahead of the Tories.
In national polls, they continue to be above the Conservatives and for a party trying to big up their chances of winning the next London mayoral election in 2028, this felt like a key signpost of their progress in London.
And they failed.
Reform candidate Pete Newman won 1,612 votes, 310 votes fewer than the Conservatives’ Ewan Cameron, who finished in third place.
Reform’s share of the vote actually was narrowly down on 2024, dropping to 5.9% and meaning the party only just managed to hold their deposit.
The Holborn and St Pancras result was the latest in a long string of poor performances from Reform in parliamentary by-elections.
We keep being told that the party are in a position to win the next general election. But almost every single time the public get the chance to elect a Reform MP, they decided against in.
Holborn and St Pancras was the 27th by-election Reform have stood in since forming in 2018. They have only won two of them: in Clacton, where their main opponent was a man with a bin on his head, and in Runcorn and Helsby, where Sarah Pochin won by just six votes.
