For Sagal Abdi-Wali, the new MP for Holborn and St Pancras, being elected to replace Keir Starmer in the north London constituency is “deeply personal”, she said in her acceptance speech. The 43-year-old has lived in the area since the 1990s when, as a seven-year-old, she fled war-torn Somalia with her mother and four brothers, eventually settling in Gospel Oak in Camden, which largely falls within the constituency. Her journey from refugee to member of parliament was one which she hoped would inspire “people who look like me”, she said.
Decades of volunteering in the community dovetailed with many years of active local party politics, even before she was elected to the borough council in 2022. She became the Labour cabinet member responsible for housing two years later, and in May was elected the first Black female leader of Camden council. She also chaired the local constituency party for four years.
Those deep party and community roots help explain how Abdi-Wali was selected from a long list of more than 100 to fight the seat for Labour after Starmer’s resignation last month, say friends – and were also key in seeing off the challenge from the Green party leader, Zack Polanski. I don’t think they knew that those very deep roots in the constituency existed. So if those roots are already there, you’ve got a huge, huge head start.” Tulip Siddiq, the Labour MP for neighbouring Hampstead and Highgate, agrees: “Her love of Camden is so obvious, and people really value that.
She’s very caring, very local, and she genuinely seems to have a passion for politics and public service.” After “lots of flat candidates” in the past, Siddiq says, “people like a bit of passion.” It was walking past increasing numbers of homeless people in King’s Cross in the austerity years of the 2010s that encouraged Abdi-Wali to become more active in party politics, perhaps unsurprisingly given her own background. Abdi-Wali has long been involved in community groups working with young people, including being a governor of several schools and founding football clubs where she still plays regularly and is “pretty aggressive on the pitch”, according to her close friend. (She is also an “ardent” Spurs fan, the friend says, “which may count against her in the [Arsenal-dominated] constituency”.) Housing is one issue where she has faced some criticism; Abdi-Wali was the cabinet member in charge of the borough’s housing when in November 2024 the housing ombudsman published a damning report calling the council’s service rude, defensive and inadequate. Friends point out that she had been in the post for only six months and defend her record in the period she was in charge of the brief.
Abdi-Wali also shrugged off a tweet when she was selected by Reform’s Zia Yusuf , which Labour representatives swiftly called “clearly racist” and was condemned even by other senior Reform figures. But she said: “‘No, I feel very resilient about it. It’s made me even more determined to get on and do it.’”
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