Labour’s campaign to vanquish Zack Polanski in the Holborn and St Pancras by-election is being bankrolled by the environmental tycoon Dale Vince, The i Paper can reveal.
Vince has donated £50,000 for a contest which Labour strategists believe could prove crucial in shutting down the insurgency of the Green Party of England and Wales and potentially end Polanski’s leadership of the party.
Vince – who has previously given money to the Greens as well as environmental protest groups – acknowledged it was “ironic” that he was now bankrolling the effort to beat Polanski, but said Labour represented the “better alternative”.
Voters in Sir Keir Starmer’s old seat of Holborn and St Pancras will choose a new MP on 8 October, with Polanski going up against Labour’s Sagal Abdi-Wali, the leader of Camden council.
The by-election is the biggest electoral test of Burnham’s premiership to date, and is being seen as an important indicator for whether Labour can contain the Greens on a national level and win back progressive voters who abandoned the party under Starmer.
The Greens surged in the polls after Polanski was elected party leader in September 2025 and in February won a spectacular by-election victory in Gorton and Denton at Labour’s expense.
Since then, the party has sagged in the polls thanks to a series of missteps by Polanski and Burnham’s arrival in Downing Street.
Vince donated to Labour, the Greens and the Lib Dems
Vince has been a major donor to Labour in recent years, giving more than £6m to the party since 2013 via his green energy company, Ecotricity.
The firm has previously on occasion donated to the Greens and the Liberal Democrats, and Vince has also financially supported direct action climate groups such as Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil.
Vince was present on Downing Street for Burnham’s arrival in No 10 in July, and speaking to The i Paper at Labour’s conference in Liverpool last week, he revealed that he had already opened his cheque book for the new regime with a £50,000 donation.
“It won’t come out in the Electoral Commission reporting for a few months but I’m happy to just be upfront with you,” he said. “They asked me to help with the cost of the by-election.
“I’ve known Andy for a while, and I do rate him. But basically, they asked me to help and I said I would.”
The spending limit for candidates during the regulated period at a parliamentary by-election is £180,050, so Vince’s donation represents more than a quarter of the total amount which Labour would be able to spend on the contest.
British green energy entrepreneur Dale Vince has opened his cheque book to Andy Burnham’s new government (Photo: AFP)Vince noted the irony in bankrolling Labour to defeat the leader of the Greens. “For me, it’s ironic,” he said. “I’m a very green person.” However, he said he had decided at the last general election to support Labour “as the better alternative to the Green Party”.
While some commentators have suggested that Labour may have to strike a deal with other left-wing parties such as the Greens to stay in power after the next election, Vince said he did not see things heading in this direction.
“I think we’ll see a shakedown in the polls over the next couple of years,” he said. “Reform are melting away. Kemi [Badenoch]’s on the rise, Andy’s on the rise. And that other bloke, the Restore [Britain] bloke [Rupert Lowe]… I mean, there’s three right-wing places for votes now.
“The right-wing vote has been splintered like never before. I think Andy has united the party already, and I think already the public like him… I think Labour will win the next election.”
Vince has been publicly lobbying the Government to adopt several measures in the Budget on 28 October, including equalising capital gains tax with income tax over time and introducing a price control mechanism for North Sea energy.
Vince said he had not received any feedback yet on the former proposal, but claimed the Government had shown interest in his ideas about the North Sea, where he advocates fixing the “price of oil and gas produced in our North Sea according to the cost of production and a fair margin”.
“Our modelling shows we can save £10bn a year off our energy bills if we did that, but at the same time it would provide security for North Sea jobs and investment because output has been declining for 30 years,” he said.
He said such a system would justify drilling in the Jackdaw gas field, which is awaiting approval from the Government.
Vince said: “What I’ve said to the government is, if you do this, if you price fix the North Sea to allow the economic argument to stand, then you can shut this whole issue down.
“You can do a limited amount of new production because that’s all that’s available. You can do that and move on. You can assuage right-wing voices, union voices, all the people that are going crazy.”
Climate change activists could be assuaged because the environmental impact would be “very limited”, he added.
“It would be a pragmatic approach, a balanced way through the middle that gives something to everybody.”
A Labour spokesperson said: “All donations will be declared in the normal way, in line with Electoral Commission and Parliamentary rules.”
Hence then, the article about green tycoon dale vince donates 50 000 to stop zack polanski winning by election was published today ( ) and is available on inews ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Green tycoon Dale Vince donates £50,000 to stop Zack Polanski winning by-election )
Also on site :
- 2000s Rock Frontman Opens for Ed Sheeran After His Tour Acts Quit: ‘Everybody Seems to Be Taking Sides’
- Taylor Swift Interrupts ‘SNL’ Host’s Monologue About 2 ‘Very Lame’ Breakups: ‘I’m Not Your Therapist, Actually’
- This Classic Ryan Murphy Series Is the No. 1 Best Show to Watch on Hulu Right Now According to Rotten Tomatoes