Watch: Polanski campaigns in Urdu for London seat

After securing the Green party nomination to stand in the Holborn and St Pancras by-election, Zac Polanski’s campaign is already in full swing.

Today the Green party leader released a video in Urdu calling on voters to support him on 8 October, in the by-election triggered by Sir Keir Starmer’s resignation.

آٹھ اکتوبر کو گرین پارٹی کو ووٹ دیں pic.twitter.com/xzqVkDpXLv

— Bold Politics (@_BoldPolitics) September 14, 2026

The bad news for him though: only 156 people even speak Urdu as their main language in the Holborn and St Pancras constituency, according to census data. Even they might need a translator to make sense of Polanski’s nonsense.

Shadow housing, communities and local government secretary Katie Lam has branded the campaigning tactic ‘poisonous’. She wrote on X: ‘We must ban this practice for good. Politics in our country should be conducted in the language of public life.’