Sky News goes full Pravda in its coverage of the Holborn & St Pancras by-election result

Holborn & St Pancras by-election result (8th October 2026):

Labour 45.2% (-3.7)

Greens 32.8% (+22.4)

Conservatives 7.1% (-0.1)

Reform UK 5.9% (-0.2)

Liberal Democrats 3.4% (-2.4)

Restore Britain 2.5% (n/a)

Workers Party of Britain 1.1% (n/a)

Rejoin EU 0.8% (n/a)

Monster Raving Loony Party 0.3% (-0.1)

Christian Peoples Alliance 0.2% (n/a)

Climate Party 0.2% (n/a)

UKIP 0.2% (-)

UK Voice 0.1% (n/a)

Communist League 0.0% (n/a)

Independent - Darwood 0.0% (n/a)

As you can see, it would be a bit of a stretch to paint this outcome as some sort of unmitigated catastrophe for the Green Party of England & Wales.  It was their second-best result of all-time in a parliamentary by-election, they more than trebled their vote share since the 2024 general election, and they enjoyed a 13% swing from Labour.  Even if you assume that they pretty much inherited Andrew Feinstein's considerable support in the constituency from 2024, their vote share was still higher than the combined Green / Feinstein vote at the general election.  It was only a disappointing result for them in the psychological sense that they had put forward their leader Zack Polanski as candidate, which made it look like they were going all-out for victory and that only an outright victory would do.

But if the rumours are true that Andy Burnham was watching this result closely to see if it is worth the risk of calling a snap general election next spring, I'm not sure that what he's seen will have cut the mustard.  What he really needed was not simply evidence consistent with the current national opinion polls that the Greens are not doing quite as well as they were in the late days of Starmer, but instead proof that that there is a potential for them to totally collapse and perhaps slump to only 3% or 4% nationwide, allowing Labour to hoover up their votes and just about squeeze out an overall majority in terms of seats.  There's absolutely no sign of that here.  The story is actually one of considerable Green resilience, which if it continues to hold up could make a Labour majority all but impossible in a snap election.

Not that you'd be aware of that nuanced picture if you tuned in to Sky News at midnight to hear Jon Craig give an introductory monologue that was the most insanely biased you'll ever encounter on any channel that is not called GB News.  We were informed:

1) That the by-election was a "disaster" for the Greens - even though by that point Craig already had a fair idea of the result and even read out an estimate that Labour were on course for around 40% and the Greens were on course for around 30%.  I can't have been the only person sitting there scratching my head and thinking "er, that doesn't sound like much of a disaster for the Greens to me, Jon".

2) That it didn't really matter how Zack Polanski tried to recover from his "disaster" because he might well be on his way out as leader within a few weeks.  Now, it's quite true that Polanksi's position being publicly questioned by one of his direct predecessors (Caroline Lucas) is a very unusual situation that is well worthy of note, but to give the impression that Lucas is so "respected" that her intervention makes Polanski's leadership untenable is not only a biased piece of analysis, it's a really poor piece of analysis.  It ignores the fact that the source of Lucas' discontent is her dislike of the resolution about Zionism passed by the Green rank-and-file themselves.  The idea that she'll effectively be able to mount a coup not only against the leader but also against the majority position of the members is stretching credibility somewhat.  If anything, the member backlash is likely to be against Lucas herself, and Polanski's position may even be strengthened.

3) That it was just an absolute given that the motion about Zionism must have been detested by voters and must have contributed to the Greens' "disastrous" result in the by-election.  Craig recounted an anecdote about a voter who had cast a postal vote for the Greens a few weeks ago, but who was so disgusted by the Zionism motion that he went to the polling station to cancel his postal vote and to cast a vote for Labour instead (I'd be surprised if that's even permissible under the rules, but that's what Craig claimed).  But it didn't seem to even occur to Craig that the very fact that the Greens took one-third of the vote was a strong indication that his anecdote could not possibly have been representative, and indeed that there may have been many voters who reacted to the Zionism motion in completely the opposite way.

My view is that Craig's far-out ramblings are further evidence of a right-wing ratchet effect in the mainstream media.  The extreme nature of GB News and similar outlets coaxes mainstream journalists into a sense that they are just being 'neutral' when they unthinkingly parrot right-wing talking points.  And of course there's the permanent in-built protective bias towards Israel, which makes it impossible for journalists to even conceive of a political party experiencing anything other than severe negative effects for daring to speak out against genocide and apartheid outwith the tight constraints deemed permissible and decent by the establishment.

Later in the programme, the Sky studio presenter 'corrected' a Green spokesman who mentioned the genocide by saying "we have to point out, of course, that the Israeli government denies that there has been a genocide".  Really?  You're still doing that even at this stage?  Would you interrupt a guest who mentioned the Russian invasion of Ukraine by saying "we have to point out, of course, that the Russian government denies invading Ukraine and says that the army has simply been conducting a special military operation"?  Because that would be no more fatuous as a 'clarification'.

Well, we needn't have feared that the Alba soap opera would end when the party did. Good old Robert "Wonderbairn" Reid - who else would take legal action against a party that no longer exists? It's a kind of genius in its own way. The Feud Shall Never Die.

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) October 8, 2026

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