What do you think?
Lutfur Rahman has been elected as the Executive Mayor of Tower Hamlets following local elections that took place on Thursday 5 May.
Lutfur Rahman of Aspire received a total of 40,804 votes, followed by John Biggs of The Labour Party who received 33,487 votes.
The turnout for the Mayoral election was 41.92% per cent.
Will Tuckley, Returning Officer for Tower Hamlets and the council’s chief executive, said:
“First of all I’d like to congratulate Lutfur Rahman on his election victory and I look forward to helping him deliver on his priorities as Mayor for the people of Tower Hamlets.
“Running elections involves an incredible amount of hard work by our Elections Team, the Metropolitan Police and many others and I would like to thank everyone who has been involved for working so diligently from the early planning stages, through to polling day and the count today.
“Our work on the 2022 elections is not quite complete as we look forward to tomorrow’s count for the council’s 45 borough ward councillors.”
For a full breakdown of the election results, visit https://democracy.towerhamlets.gov.uk/mgElectionAreaResults.aspx?ID=176&RPID=47848495
I am disappointed that someone convicted of votes rigging has been allowed to stand for Mayor again and has now been elected. A sad reflection of the state of politics in the UK.
Very disappointed. How on earth someone who has been found guilty on SIX charges in an election court can stand for election is beyond me.
What has he be up to the last seven years? How has he supported himself? He declared himself bankrupt and left private citizens out of pocket to the tune of several hundreds of thousands. He should repay them with his new found wealth.
Our borough’s executive Mayor has executive powers, which mean they don’t have to listen to councillors. Biggs, as far as I know, didn’t use these powers and delegated numerous roles. It will be interesting to see if Mayor Rahman does the same or just dictates.
Rahman says he has learnt “from my mistakes”, but won’t list them? One criticism made repeatedly is that he doesn’t allow himself to be scrutinised – he did not attend council scrutiny meetings when asked.
It looks as if he indeed hasn’t learnt and did not attend a single husting during these recent elections. He was the only candidate to do this. He also did not allow himself to be interviewed by the mainstream media (The Times, or the main TV channels).
Lutfur refers to himself as a lawyer, yet he was struck off as a solicitor by the Law Society. As the Law Gazette says “the title ‘lawyer’ is not legally protected. Anyone can call themselves a lawyer or offer legal services as a lawyer, irrespective of whether they have any legal training or qualifications. This is confusing for the public and in some cases misleading”. (see https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/features/regulation-the-end-of-our-profession/5053623.article).