The Workers Party’s decision to keep George Galloway in the race for Holborn and St Pancras could prove decisive, while sending a wider warning to the Green Party that cooperation on the left cannot be a one-way street.
George Galloway’s choice to run in Holborn and St Pancras has shifted the landscape in the constituency in a major way. The Workers Party is not stepping aside. That decision sends a message. Cooperation cannot mean smaller parties and independent candidates giving up their chances while the Green Party keeps running without making the same kind of compromises. Galloway is not a face in the race. He brings a known political name. He comes with years of experience. He has a base of voters who have grown tired of the mainstream parties. This is especially true for people who are frustrated with Britain’s policy, military actions and the war in Gaza.
His appeal has been especially strong among parts of Britain’s Arab communities. It has also drawn in voters who’re deeply committed to the anti-war movement. For this reason the Workers Party’s choice to put Galloway forward is far more than adding another name to the ballot. It is a challenge to the idea that the Green Party is the natural home for every progressive anti-establishment and anti-war voter in the area.
The 2024 general election results offer a starting point for understanding why the Workers Party believes the Green Party faces such a tough road. Andrew Feinstein ran as an independent. He got 7,312 votes. He came in second behind Keir Starmer. The Green Party’s candidate received 4,030 votes. Labour won the seat with 18,884 votes. If you add the votes for Feinstein and the Green candidate the total is 11,342. That’s still 7,542 votes of Labour. This number matters. There has been an assumption that the Green Party can easily take over the support that Feinstein built in the election.
Especially now that Feinstein has backed Zack Polanski.. Voters are not just numbers. They are not assets. An endorsement does not mean all of a candidate’s supporters will automatically follow. The Green Party cannot rely on the votes alone. It cannot assume that Feinstein’s supporters will all move in one block. The Green Party must build a bigger coalition. At the time it must face a candidate like Galloway. He speaks directly to the voters who supported Feinstein because of his stance against war and, against the establishment.
I think this is where George Galloway’s candidacy becomes particularly significant. The Workers Party believes that a proportion of the electorate which supported Feinstein in 2024 can now be attracted to George Galloway, voters whose primary concerns remain Palestine, opposition to war and dissatisfaction with the established political parties. Feinstein’s endorsement of the Green campaign undoubtedly gives the Green Party an advantage. The Workers Party argues that this does not settle the question of where those voters will ultimately go. If George Galloway were to secure 2,000 to 4,000 votes that could have a substantial impact on the Green Party’s prospects in a constituency where the Green Party is already trying to build a winning coalition from a relatively modest starting point.
This should not be presented as a certainty about the vote share because elections are unpredictable and voters do not automatically follow previous candidates or endorsements. Nevertheless it explains why the Workers Party sees George Galloway as an electoral and political asset rather than simply another candidate competing for a handful of protest votes.
The argument becomes even stronger when the wider experience of the 2024 election is examined. In Ilford North independent candidate Leanne Mohamad received 15,119 votes while Wes Streeting retained the seat with 15,647, a majority of 528 votes. The Green candidate received a 1,794 votes. It would be wrong to claim that the Green Party caused Mohamad’s defeat because there is no way of knowing how those Green voters would have voted if the Green Party candidate had not stood. However the figures demonstrate the consequences of a divided vote: the Green Party vote was more than three times the size of Streeting’s eventual majority meaning that even a relatively small movement of Green voters could have changed the character of the contest.
The same pattern was visible in Birmingham Yardley, where Labour’s Jess Phillips won with 11,275 votes while Workers Party candidate Jody McIntyre came within 693 votes receiving 10,582. The Green candidate received another 1,958 votes meaning that the combined Workers Party and Green Party vote was substantially larger, than Labour’s total. Again there is no guarantee that every Green voter would have supported McIntyre. The result demonstrates just how competitive the wider left‑wing electoral space had become and how the division of that vote can ultimately benefit the established parties.
These examples are key to the Workers Party’s argument about what happened in 2024. Its position is that progressive parties and independent candidates should have been ready to look at agreements that could have stopped votes from being split between candidates who had areas of political common ground. The Workers Party says that if there had been willingness to cooperate, to negotiate and to recognise where each organisation had real electoral strength, a very different set of results might have come out.
The important point however is that cooperation cannot be forced after the fact or used in some cases. If the Green Party expects Workers Party candidates to step aside in seats where the Greens think they have the chance then the Workers Party replies that the Greens must also be ready to negotiate and to make concessions where other candidates have a stronger base. From the Workers Party’s view that is what real political cooperation means: not one party always winning because others drop out but different organisations making deals that raise the strength of the wider movement.
That disagreement now sits at the heart of the contest in Holborn and St Pancras. Feinstein’s choice to support Zack Polanski gives the Greens an useful source of help especially because Feinstein almost built a major independent challenge in 2024.. The Greens cannot simply add his 7,312 votes to their earlier 4,030 votes and say that they are on the road to victory.
Even that combined number would still be thousands behind Labour’s 18,884 votes. The challenge is therefore to grow beyond both campaigns while also stopping the Workers Party from taking a large share of the voters who might otherwise have gone to the Greens. Galloway’s presence makes that job much harder because his political identity overlaps with the issues that drove the challenge in 2024 – anti‑war politics, Palestine and frustration, with mainstream parties.
The Workers Party’s decision to keep Galloway in the contest should therefore be understood as both a strategy and a political warning. The party is effectively telling the Greens that it will no longer accept the idea that cooperation means smaller organisations simply withdrawing whenever the Greens believe they have an opportunity to win. If the Greens genuinely believe that the progressive movement needs to work the Workers Party argues that they must demonstrate that commitment through reciprocal negotiations rather than expecting others to make unilateral concessions.
The phrase that increasingly defines the Workers Party’s position is simple: cooperation must work both ways. Without that principle the party argues, calls for unity risk becoming little more than calls for everyone to support the Greens.
George Galloway is well placed to make that argument because he possesses something that most minor-party candidates do not: a substantial national political profile and an established relationship with voters who have repeatedly demonstrated their willingness to break with the traditional parties. His anti-war politics have given him a position within British politics and his support among sections of Muslim and Arab communities gives him access to an electorate that has become increasingly important in recent elections.
The 2024 results demonstrated the extent to which issues such as Gaza, foreign policy and dissatisfaction with Labour could reshape safe constituencies with independent candidates coming remarkably close to defeating established Labour MPs. Galloway’s candidacy therefore has the potential to make Holborn and St Pancras more unpredictable than the Green Party might prefer.
The Greens may campaign aggressively mobilise volunteers and benefit from Feinstein’s endorsement but campaigning alone cannot solve the electoral problem. They need to retain their existing supporters persuade a proportion of Feinstein’s former voters to transfer their allegiance attract new voters and do so while facing a Workers Party candidate with a recognised national profile.
If Galloway succeeds in securing thousand votes the Green Party could find itself facing a simple mathematical problem: a campaign can be energetic and highly visible while still failing to assemble enough votes to win. The 2024 figures demonstrate that even the theoretical combination of Feinstein’s. The Green vote would not have been sufficient to defeat Labour meaning that the Greens require genuine growth rather, than merely the redistribution of an existing progressive vote.
This is why Holborn and St Pancras matters beyond the constituency itself. The contest has become a test of whether Britain’s fragmented left can move beyond competing claims to ownership and develop a serious culture of cooperation. The Workers Party’s argument is that the experience of 2024 showed what happens when progressive voters are divided across candidates while the Green Party’s position appears to be that it can build its own electoral coalition without making the compromises demanded by other parties. The result in Holborn will provide a test of those competing strategies.
If the Greens fail to win despite Feinstein’s endorsement and a determined campaign questions will inevitably be raised about whether they can consolidate the wider anti-establishment and progressive electorate. If Galloway secures a vote the Workers Party will argue that it has demonstrated that the Greens cannot simply assume ownership of that electorate.
Ultimately George Galloway’s candidacy has changed the contest because he has introduced a force that the Greens cannot easily absorb or ignore. He represents a strand of anti-war and anti-establishment opinion while the Workers Party is using his candidacy to make a broader argument about the future of the left. The party is effectively saying that if the Greens want cooperation they must negotiate it; if they want unity they must practise it;. If they expect other candidates to stand aside they must be prepared to consider doing the same. Holborn and St Pancras is therefore not simply a contest over who will win one seat. It is becoming a test of who has the leverage to shape the future direction of Britain’s left—and George Galloway could have a decisive role, in determining the answer.
