“Who knows who to vote for in Tower Hamlets,” laughed Stacy Green. “I don’t understand what happened in the past, but I know it was dodgy.”
Ms Green, 38, summed up the thoughts of many residents in the east Londonborough ahead of the local elections on May 5.
The council was plagued by scandal after the former mayor Lutfur Rahman was thrown out of office in 2015 and banned from standing for five years after an election court found him guilty of electoral fraud. This year, ban expired, he is standing to lead the borough again.
Labour’s John Biggs is his main rival. First elected a councillor in Wapping in 1988, he has been mayor since 2015 when the local election result the previous year was declared void and rerun after Mr Rahman was accused of corrupt and illegal practices.
But despite past events, Mr Rahman and his Aspire party have been billed as Labour’s main rival. Aspire have won two of the recent by-elections in the borough and Mr Rahman still appears to have huge pockets of support, including from one former mayor of London.
Ken Livingstone attended Aspire’s election launch, where he said he would trust Mr Rahman — who has always denied any wrongdoing — “with his life”.
Mr Biggs has also faced his own scandal. Last year, his council took Labour MP Apsana Begum to court, accusing her of housing fraud. She was found not guilty and the prosecution put off some Left-wing voters who saw it as an attempt to oust a Jeremy Corbyn ally.
John Wilks said: “I haven’t made up my mind. Labour has had my vote before. [But] that stuff with the MP was a waste of time. I also drive and some of the low traffic neighbourhoods and what they did to the traffic around Bethnal Green were ridiculous. Tower Hamlets politics is a bit mad so I will do my research a bit more.”
Mr Biggs paused the borough’s “Liveable Streets” low traffic project after a number of protests. His rival has made reversing zones one of his big policies.
“People were overwhelmingly supportive during the consultation,” Mr Biggs said. “But when they were put in, there was a divide between the more middle class and working class residents. I understand that and I listened to residents.”
Sha Begum, 26, said she will vote Labour. “Our borough has a reputation and that won’t be helped by the man who was mayor previously becoming mayor again. I don’t know all the ins and outs of it, but I know he was banned [from standing] for a while. I don’t think you can come back after that and Labour are probably the only ones that can beat him.”
Rabina Khan, once a member of Labour and then Mr Rahman’s Tower Hamlets First party, could cause an upset in the election. A popular Shadwell councillor, she finished second in the mayoral race as leader of her own independent People’s Alliance of Tower Hamlets party last year, and this year is standing for the Lib Dems.
She said: “A lot of residents are not happy with the current administration. I have a real vision for this borough.”
Dress designer Parvin Khanum, who runs the Mahrin saree shop in Whitechapel, said: “I’m voting Lib Dem. I never have before but it’s about time we had a woman in charge. Rabina has always helped us.”
Her husband, Muhammad Khan, 38, added: “I’ve voted Labour before. But now everyone’s bills are so much higher... My business rates have gone up, my council bills are going up and my income is going down. That’s why I want to change and vote for someone who is going to help me.”
The cladding crisis that emerged after the devastating Grenfell fire has drastically impacted residents of the
borough which has the most high rises in Western Europe. Some 300 buildings in Tower Hamlets have registered for the Government’s £1 billion building safety fund to fix cladding issues. Inspections exposed a raft of safety issues not directly linked to cladding in many blocks, leaving leaseholders facing bills costing thousands.
David Jones, 65, who lives in Luke House in Shadwell, is facing a £16,000 bill to fix fire safety issues in his block where he has been a leaseholder for 13 years. He said: “I’m a Conservative but I won’t be voting for them in this election... Michael Gove needs to be doing a lot more to help leaseholders affected by these issues. It’s the principle, we shouldn’t have to pay for something that is not our fault. People’s lives are being ruined by these charges.”
