By-election in Great Britain: Labor candidate from Somalia fights for seat with Green Party leader

Hairdresser Hassan Ali was one of the first with his yellow poster with the red words “Vote Labor” in the window. It hangs in his hair salon above the photos of haircuts and braids of his mostly Somali customers in London's Kentish Town district. "I've known Sagal since I was a teenager, including her mother and father," says the Somali, who came to London as a refugee and grew up there. “If there is one person who cares and has a big heart, it is Sagal.”

Sagal is the 42-year-old Labor politician Sagal Abdi-Wali of Somali origin. She is set to replace resigned former Prime Minister Keir Starmer as Labor MP in a by-election this Thursday in the London constituency of Holborn & St. Pancras. Their election poster is hanging in all Somali shops in this constituency, which stretches from the inner-city nightlife district of Covent Garden to Karl Marx's grave in Highgate - a new self-confidence from the Somali community, which otherwise appears very discreet.

Sagal Abdi-Wali has been a local councilor in Camden for four years. This year she became head of the district council. Now she wants to become the first black East African woman in the British Parliament.

Green Party leader Zack Polanski wants to take away this hope. So far he has only been a member of the London City Council, now he is running for parliament here, of all places, where he wanted to be on the local council for the Liberal Democrats in 2015. Under his left-wing populist leadership style, as Polanski himself calls it, the Green Party in England and Wales has grown from 68,000 to 230,000 members within a year, and in February it took a constituency in the Greater Manchester area that was believed to be safe from Labor in a by-election. And now?

In the final week of the election campaign, the Greens are emphasizing that a vote is their only way to force Labor to make changes. Everyone learns that Polanski is Jewish and gay in the Green Party's election campaign advertising; it is intended to emphasize openness and equal opportunities. In addition to environmental and climate issues, Polanski is strongly committed to Gaza and against Israel. Last Sunday, the annual Green party conference declared Zionism to be racism. In Muslim areas, Green Party leaflets with a Palestinian flag background are distributed.

Polanski is strongly wooing Muslims. He even spoke Urdu in a campaign video in order to be better received by the 10 percent of voters with a Bangladeshi family background. But Urdu is not the language of the people of Bangladesh, but the language of the former Pakistani oppressors. To avoid this embarrassing mistake, Polanski would only have had to ask his deputy party leader Mothin Ali, whose parents are from Bangladesh.

Will the Greens succeed in stealing voters from the Muslim Labor candidate? Mohammad, an employee at the madrasa at the mosque in Somers Town, says that his Bangladeshi parents' generation still voted Labor. “Today we stay out of politics.” For him, the fact that Labor candidate Abdi-Wali is a Muslim is a sign that she has allowed herself to be exploited by politics.

Sarah, 30, herself of Somali descent, has put a Green Party sign in front of her apartment in Somers Town. She has nothing to do with Labor: “Segal represents a right-wing Labor wing that hasn’t done enough against the genocide and hasn’t done enough to support needy people and housing,” she claims.

Frances Hanlon, 71, also wants to vote Green and no longer Labor. “Labour’s Blair launched an illegal war, Starmer ignored, even supported, genocide,” she claims. She welcomes the fact that the Greens are now an anti-Zionist party by decision. “Finally someone has a conscience for it,” says the former carpenter on the sunny terrace of a café in Bloomsbury.

In Labour's campaign materials - both Labor and the Greens have new, sometimes expensive, throwing materials distributed two to three times a week - one reads more about Abdi-Wali's attempt to do more to combat homelessness in the constituency. Flyers show Abdi-Wali as a young girl in Camden and tell her story, talking about her life and her commitment to community issues and how she secured £35 million in government funding for social housing renovations.

The taz meets Abdi-Wali at a campaign event together with Foreign Minister Ed Miliband in Kings Cross between old workers' settlements. What does it offer the constituency? “I am visible and from here and I seriously care about the people here,” she says and smiles kindly. During the election campaign she appears diplomatic and weighs her words carefully, while Zack Polanski makes big statements and the conservative candidate Ewan Cameron appears the most relaxed; he has no chance anyway.

There is a lot of campaigning outside schools and in shopping centers, even after Friday prayers outside Kings Cross Mosque. While the Labor people are calmly distributing their information, one of the Greens shouts “Green for Palestine!” and offers his leaflet to those coming from the mosque. The 47-year-old chef Sayem and the 28-year-old delivery driver MD Ahmad both want to vote Labor. Firstly, Labor is a socially minded party, secondly, the Labor candidate is a Muslim African migrant.

And even though there is a poster with the words “Vote Green” on Kari Rahman’s vegetable shop in Kentish Town, he admits to taz that he is voting for Labor because the party helps workers. Likewise Carlos Valquez, who sits on a park bench with his wife watching his son on the playground: “Andy Burnham stands for new opportunities, investments in care and young people and perhaps even a return to the EU.” He didn't think the Greens were bad before, but now Labor could change things.

Pollsters see Labor just ahead. If Green Party leader Polanski misses the chance to enter parliament, this could weaken his position. The dispute over Zionism is heated, and there have been numerous resignations from the party since the party conference vote was rejected by the parliamentary group.

“I used to always vote Labor and Green in the local elections in May,” says Ghana-born nurse Adele. And on Thursday? She doesn't know it yet, but a trend can be seen: "I feel sorry for the people in Gaza, but I want to know what political representatives are doing for us."