Sagal Abdi-Wali does not want to be the prime minister. She doesn’t even want to lead her party. Labour’s candidate for Holborn and St Pancras laughs and shakes her head with unusual vigour when asked if she would like to follow in the footsteps of the last member of parliament for the constituency, Keir Starmer.

“No, no, no, no, that’s not at all, in any way, what I’m trying to do,” she says during a break in campaigning in the Primrose Hill cafe in Regent’s Park. “I’m literally trying to get through the next few weeks and trying to be the member of parliament for this constituency, and that’s all I care about.”

It’s a message the 42-year-old former leader of Camden council returns to with ruthless discipline ahead of a byelection on 8 October. It is plastered all over her campaigning material and brought up by every door-knocking Labour activist – every mention an implicit comparison between herself and her high-profile opponent Zack Polanski.

“All I’ve done, all my life, is be a committed champion for people here,” says Abdi-Wali. “Whether it’s volunteering as a teenager or being a councillor, and all the work I did in between, that’s all I’ve ever done. All I want to be is someone who will be visible and local and committed every single day.”

Labour HQ is in no doubt of the stakes in this high-profile byelection, triggered after the former prime minister was unceremoniously dumped by his own MPs and quit the seat to concentrate on international affairs.

If the party wins here, Andy Burnham can argue that he saw off Reform in Makerfield and can kibosh the Greens in the capital. Spinners will say his appeal is national and point to victory in this part of north London as proof that his homespun northern charm works south of the Watford Gap. If he loses, his relatively lengthy honeymoon period in Westminster is over.

The constituency is young, popular with students, and diverse. About 45% of constituents were born overseas and 48% are aged between 18 and 34, compared with the UK average of 28%. The borough was once among the most ironclad of Labour strongholds but the party has lost support here since Starmer first won in 2015, its majority cut in half from 2019 to the 2024 general election.

“All things being equal, Labour win,” says More in Common’s Luke Tryl. “But if Polanski can excite his base enough, and tap into some on the soft left who see it as a way to keep Burnham true, then the Greens could nick it.”

Despite failing to persuade the Green party to put off its annual conference, Polanski is flooding the area with members, focusing heavily on Gaza, delivering leaflets saying no Labour councillor has taken up an invitation to sign a statement of solidarity with Palestine. The fact Abdi-Wali did not attend a Camden Muslim Network hustings on Tuesday has been leapt on by Green activists.

Abdi-Wali insists she is not focused on what any other candidate is saying, and she won’t be drawn on the Greens ground game or digital air war. Her nonattendance at the hustings was due to a last-minute invitation and a prior obligation, she says. She won’t say if she thinks the Labour government needs to go further on Gaza, only that the foreign secretary’s decision to call Israel’s occupation of the West Bank unlawful and announce sweeping sanctions on trade with Israeli settlements was welcome.

“People have seen what’s been happening over the last three years – the 70,000 Palestinians killed by the Israeli government and the atrocities of Hamas on October 7th,” she says. “In our communities we’ve seen a rise in hate and we’ve been doing a lot of work in making sure those communities feel supported.”

Abdi-Wali arrived in London in the early 90s, speaking no English, after fleeing war in Somalia with her four brothers and her mother, who trained as a lawyer in Somalia. “The way we made friends was through sport, was through football, and we just all spoke this universal language,” she says. She moved to Gospel Oak when she was seven, and her father later joined the family. He stood as a candidate for the Liberal Democrats in the 2010 local elections, but it is her mother, a community activist, who provided her inspiration, says Abdi-Wali.

So why did she not remain a community organiser, or lead on local issues as the leader of Camden council, a position she took up only in May? “I’ve seen as a councillor, and as a council leader, a lot of the issues that particularly impact this community like housing and the climate emergency need national-level policy and national advocacy,” she says.

It was seeing a rise in homelessness around King’s Cross that pushed her to join the Labour party in 2015. “In the 2000s it was almost eradicated, but when I came back to Camden from university, homelessness was really rampant,” she says. “It was a political choice … I realised it needed political solutions.”

Housing is a big concern in the constituency where, despite the proliferation of millionaire’s mansions, 76% of residents rent, compared with the UK average of 36%. But Abdi-Wali is wary of rent controls, saying they can help those already in housing but reduce the availability of stock for others. “It’s not a solution for the vast majority of people,” she says. “But I think everything should be looked at as an option to see how we can really tackle the housing crisis.”

Abdi-Wali admits she was unsure about putting her name forward as Labour’s candidate, but as well as receiving lots of positive encouragement, it was a nudge from a very different source that made her apply.

When her name began being mentioned, the Reform UK home affairs spokesperson, Zia Yusuf, wrote on social media that Abdi-Wali was being “foisted” on the people of Holborn, despite being “born in Somalia” (adding, if the subtext were not clear enough, “do you understand what’s happening?”).

Did Yusuf’s comments tip the balance? “It was more that I think people like me should be in this arena,” she says. “And wanting to make sure that young people that look like me – or don’t look like me – can understand that it’s not just divisive, hateful rhetoric that gets you here. Actually just being a local person committed to your community and wanting to do better for it can also do that.”