Sagal Abdi-Wali won with 12,292 votes and eleven of the 15 candidates lost their deposits. Every name, party and address constituency from the official list.
Fifteen candidates will be on the ballot paper in Holborn and St Pancras on Thursday 8 October. Camden published the official list at 5pm on Tuesday 15 September.
If you are not on the electoral register, you have until 11.59pm on Tuesday 22 September to fix it. Miss that and you cannot vote in this by-election, whatever is on the ballot paper. (Register to vote)
Updated 11 October: the by-election is over. Labour’s Sagal Abdi-Wali won on 8 October with 12,292 votes to the Green leader Zack Polanski’s 8,928, a majority of 3,364 on a 38.76 per cent turnout. The full result, every candidate’s votes and what it means for Camden Council.
Updated 3 October: every registration, postal and proxy deadline has now passed. Polls open 7am to 10pm on Thursday 8 October. Three polling stations have moved: RADA Studios voters go to the Chamber, 12 Bloomsbury Square; London Irish Centre voters go to St Paul’s Church, Camden Square; and Castlehaven Community Centre voters go to Castlehaven Community Hub, 21 Castlehaven Road. Postal votes can be handed in at any Camden polling station or the Town Hall on Judd Street until 10pm, and a lost or spoilt postal pack can be replaced until 5pm on polling day (Camden Council, 23 September).
We promised this list on 12 September, when the notice of election was published. Here it is, taken from the council’s own record rather than from anyone else’s summary.
The 15 candidates
Names and party descriptions are exactly as they appear on the statement of persons nominated, in the alphabetical order the ballot paper will use.
| Candidate | Description on the ballot paper | Home address is in |
|---|---|---|
| Sagal Abdi-Wali | Labour Party | Hampstead & Highgate |
| Barmy Brunch | Official Monster Raving Loony Party | Watford |
| Ewan Cameron | The Conservative Party Candidate | Hampstead & Highgate |
| Tom Darwood | no description | Southend East & Rochford |
| Clare Fischer | Climate Party | Hampstead & Highgate |
| George Galloway | Workers Party | Dumfries & Galloway |
| Tyler Kurtis Johnson | Restore Britain | Queens Park & Maida Vale |
| Briony Anne Lonbay Kapoor | Rejoin EU | Holborn & St Pancras |
| Peter Newman | Reform UK | Lewisham East |
| Ketankumar Pipaliya | UK VOICE safer and stronger UK | Watford |
| Zack Polanski | The Green Party | Walthamstow |
| Jonathan Silberman | Communist League | Beaconsfield |
| Helen Spiby-Vann | Christian Peoples Alliance | Hornsey and Friern Barnet |
| Patrick Thomas Stillman | Liberal Democrats | Hampstead & Highgate |
| Ben Walker | UKIP - NO to Illegal Immigration | Stroud |
The acting returning officer is Jon Rowney, Camden’s chief executive. Full copies of the statement can be read at the Town Hall on Judd Street, WC1H 9JE.
One candidate has an address in the seat
Every one of the 15 used a right the law gives them, and asked for their home address to be kept off the published notice. Under rule 6 of Schedule 1 to the Representation of the People Act 1983, a candidate who does that must still say which constituency the address sits in. That is why the third column above exists at all.
Read down it and the picture is unusual. One candidate, Briony Anne Lonbay Kapoor of Rejoin EU, gives an address inside Holborn and St Pancras. Four give addresses next door in Hampstead and Highgate, including Labour’s, the Conservatives’ and the Liberal Democrats’. The rest range from Walthamstow and Lewisham to Stroud, Beaconsfield and, in George Galloway’s case, Dumfries and Galloway.
None of that breaks any rule. There is no residency test for candidates at all. The Electoral Commission’s guidance for parliamentary by-elections says a candidate must be at least 18 and a British, Irish or eligible Commonwealth citizen, and adds at paragraph 1.3 that “there is no requirement in law for you to be a registered elector in the UK”. (Electoral Commission, Can you stand for election?, PDF)
It is worth knowing anyway, because “local candidate” is a claim that gets made on a lot of leaflets over the next three weeks, and the record already says who lives where.
Two of them lead a party
Zack Polanski is the leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, a post the party’s own people page confirms. He was selected for this seat on 11 September and his address is in Walthamstow.
Sagal Abdi-Wali leads Camden Council. She has run the authority since May and represents Camden Square as a councillor, which raises a separate question about what happens to the council if she wins. We set that out when Labour selected her.
Both are standing against, among others, a former MP. George Galloway sat for Rochdale from 29 February to 30 May 2024, according to Parliament’s own members record. Also on the paper is Tom Darwood, who has no party description at all and is acting as his own election agent.
£7,500 of deposits, and what happens to it
Each of the 15 had to put down £500 to be validly nominated, under rule 9 of the same Schedule. That is £7,500 sitting with the council tonight.
Rule 53 decides who gets it back. A deposit is forfeited if the candidate does not poll more than one twentieth of all votes cast, which is the 5 per cent figure you hear on election night.
Camden’s own published result for 2024 shows how hard that bar is here. Twelve candidates stood and 38,602 votes were cast. A candidate therefore needed more than 1,930 votes to keep the money. Six cleared it and six did not, forfeiting £3,000 between them. (Camden Council, parliamentary election results) The count of six is our own arithmetic on the council’s published table, not a figure the council prints.
For the record, Sir Keir Starmer won the seat in July 2024 with 18,884 votes on a turnout of 54.46 per cent. Three more candidates are standing this time than did then.
Where you vote, and what to bring
The council has also published the situation of polling stations. It lists 46 polling stations across 31 buildings, from The Greenwood Centre in Kentish Town to St Alban’s Centre off Baldwin Gardens in Holborn. Several buildings run two stations side by side, split by where you fall on the register, so read the letter code on your poll card rather than joining the first queue you see.
You cannot choose your polling station. It is fixed by your address.
You will need photo ID. If you have none, the free Voter Authority Certificate has to be applied for by 5pm on Wednesday 30 September, and nothing can be issued after that.
What it means for you
- Tuesday is the deadline that actually bites. Registration closes at 11.59pm on 22 September. It takes about five minutes on GOV.UK and you can do it without a National Insurance number.
- Want a postal vote? That is Wednesday. New postal applications, and any change or cancellation of an existing postal or proxy arrangement, must reach the council by 5pm on 23 September.
- Proxy votes and photo ID close a week later, at 5pm on 30 September.
- Polls are open 7am to 10pm on Thursday 8 October, and the count runs overnight.
- Check the ballot paper order. It is alphabetical by surname, so Abdi-Wali is top and Walker is bottom. That is a mechanical fact, not a running order of importance.
Every deadline in this by-election, and why 8 October was the only Thursday the law allowed, is in our report on the notice of election. If you have moved into Camden recently, the council tax band and bin round for your new address are on our council tax and bin collection pages.
Sources: Camden Council statement of persons nominated and notice of poll, published 15 September 2026; Camden Council notice of election, dated 8 September 2026; Camden Council situation of polling stations; Camden Council parliamentary election results; Representation of the People Act 1983, Schedule 1; Electoral Commission guidance for candidates at UK parliamentary by-elections in Great Britain; Green Party of England and Wales.
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