On 1 September, Keir Starmer announced he would be stepping down as the MP for Holborn and St Pancras. This came as a surprise to no one, because Captain U-Turn had previously promised to continue as an MP after resigning as PM. As such, the main political parties must have been planning for this eventuality. It’s disappointing, then, to see that Reform’s plan is to push the most divisive and racist narrative possible:
Somalian refugee tipped to face Polanski in Starmer by-election https://t.co/y6EFMkGYBK
— Zia Yusuf (@ZiaYusufUK) September 2, 2026
Grim
The Telegraph has reported that Labour’s pick to replace Starmer will be Sagal Abdi-Wali, writing:
Sagal Abdi-Wali, who runs Camden council and was previously chairman of Sir Keir’s Constituency Labour Party, is understood to be considering a run for Parliament after the former prime minister announced he would stand down.
Additionally:
She was appointed leader of Camden council after the local elections on May 7, when she pledged to “work day and night to fight for social justice and to deliver meaningful change”.
Ms Abdi-Wali has spoken of her experiences when her family moved to London in the early 1990s to escape civil war and famine.
While some might point to Abdi-Wali’s history as an example of what people can overcome, others are using it as an excuse for racism. Predictably, Abdi-Wali is also facing attacks from the likes of Tommy Robinson:
Sagal Abdi-Wali came to our country as a child refugee, has integrated in a manner that few people could possibly question, and has spent much of her life serving the society that welcomed her.
For more than a decade she has served her community as a charity volunteer and… pic.twitter.com/FbabQb0vpR
— Sam (@SamCKx) September 2, 2026
Dan Hodges of the Mail described Yusuf’s comments as follows:
This is simply racism. No other word for it. https://t.co/pm8PCpcHJR
— (((Dan Hodges))) (@DPJHodges) September 2, 2026
Journalist and podcaster Don McGowan went further, accusing Yusuf of “being a belligerent racist and espousing the great replacement theory“. This is the white supremacist conspiracy which claims that minority groups are replacing white people through demographic means.
Another facet to all this is Yusuf’s own ancestry. Abdi-Wali is a first-generation migrant; Yusuf is second generation, with his parents having arrived here in the 1980s:
White racists said stuff like this about Yusuf’s parents when they moved to the UK from Sri Lanka in the 1980s but now their son, who isn’t white, but wants the votes of white racists, is saying stuff like this about Somali immigrants.
Truly disgusting. https://t.co/9dpcKaoObX
— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) September 3, 2026
Is it Reform’s policy that second generation People of Colour are okay but first generation people are not? It isn’t, no, because there are prominent Reform politicians who are literally first generation:
Nadhim Zahawi was born in Iraq, and Reform has no problem with that. So why is @ZiaYusufUK going after the woman who was born in Somalia and is standing in Keir Starmer’s constituency?
— Mukhtar (@I_amMukhtar) September 3, 2026
Good question. https://t.co/TvJ7rWC2SK
— (((Dan Hodges))) (@DPJHodges) September 2, 2026
This situation is particularly grim because anyone who’s sympathetic to Yusuf’s argument will eventually turn on Yusuf himself. And we see this sort of thing all the time. For an example, see the following comment from ‘remigration‘ activist Steve Laws, which he made in response to Shabana Mahmood’s hardline migration policies:
If Shebanana Mahmood keeps this up she’ll earn herself a window seat.
— SL (@Steve_Laws_) November 17, 2025
The ‘joke’ Laws is making is that Mahmood will get preferential treatment when he deports her. The real joke, though, is the idea that politicians can do a little bit of racism, and that the stoked tensions won’t run away from them.
Somalia
There’s another factor at play here of which many Britons will be unaware. Earlier this year, the American right engaged in a targeted and astroturfed campaign against the Somali population in Minnesota. We reported on the YouTuber who pushed this campaign in January:
[Nick] Shirley became famous recently after he published a YouTube documentary on fraud which took place in Minnesota daycare centres that cater to the state’s Somali population. While there is documented fraud in Minnesota, Shirley’s documentary was criticised for its poor journalistic standards, and Shirley’s obvious attempts to smear ordinary Somali Americans.
The following is a fact which didn’t make it into his ‘documentary’:
This is Aimee Bock, the former executive director of Feeding Our Future, and the ringleader of the fraud in Minnesota.
Does she look Somalian to you? pic.twitter.com/TwYLzlHpHN
— Machine Pun Kelly
(@KellyScaletta) December 29, 2025
It really has to be seen to be believed, but Shirley was turning up at these daycare centres wearing sunglasses and a microphone. With a crew of men behind him – some of them masked – Shirley alternated between saying he wanted to enroll ‘our son, little Joey’, and demanding to ‘see the children’. Shirley suggested it was strange that the staff in these facilities refused to let him into their buildings.
Shirley also criticised the facilities for having locked doors and no windows. When an actual reporter told him this was to prevent paedophiles barging in, Shirley acknowledged that this was a ‘good point’.
In other words, there’s a reason why Yusuf and Robinson expect everyone to recoil in horror when they point at Abdi-Wali’s heritage; it’s because they’re Yank-captured slop merchants.
Reform’s Running man?
Another question being asked is whether Yusuf himself will run. Notoriously, Yusuf put himself forwards to run as an MP multiple times, but the party always rejected him:
Zia Yusuf has tried and failed to make the cut to stand for Reform leaving many wondering why
The thing is, Zia, who doesn’t go by Mohammed for, reasons, doesn’t seem to understand.
He’s appealing to the types of people who also wouldn’t want him to stand as MP.
One of the reasons Reform won’t let him stand. pic.twitter.com/kUSTYKeEZt
— Jim Cognito (@JimCognito2016) September 3, 2026
Recent polling shows Reform has no chance of winning in Holborn and St Pancras. The following prediction is from Electoral Calculus:
While Reform can’t win, it can use this local election to drive national tensions. And we’ve no doubt the party will choose that option, because hatred and division is all it has.
Featured image via the Canary
By Willem Moore
From Canary via This RSS Feed.