Seven years ago it looked like Lutfur Rahman’s political career was finished. An excoriating High Court judgment by the Electoral Commissioner Richard Mawrey QC had found the mayor of Tower Hamlets and his agents guilty of multiple counts of corrupt and illegal practices including ghost voters — people with made up names or voters who didn’t live at the address for which they were registered. It also found people voting in the name of others, postal vote fraud, paying canvassers — a practice barred by electoral laws — and bribery, partly through council grants to help secure the support of local organisations and community groups.

Last Friday Mr Rahman’s ambitions were fulfilled once again as he was swept back into power, winning the Tower Hamlets mayoralty with an even bigger margin of victory over Labour’s John Biggs than in the 2014 election.

The lawyer polled almost 55 per cent of the vote while his Aspire Party won control of the council with 24 councillors elected, compared to Labour who slumped from 23 to 19.

So how did Mr Rahman, 56, manage to shake off the damage to his reputation and win an even bigger mandate from the people of Tower Hamlets?

“He is an honest man,” says Sanaor Ali, 43. “Whatever happened to him was made up. He is there for everybody, whether you are black, Asian or white.”

His friend Baharuddim Odin, 52, is nodding in agreement. “He is not a criminal. Everyone understands he is a good man.”

“We knew the majority of the people in this area are Asian and knew they would vote for Lutfur,” says Ms Lorraine Paul, 56. “I’m not surprised he’s won. I’m just surprised that he was allowed to be re-elected. It’s just scandalous.”

In an article for the American Left-wing website Jacobin, Mr Rahman, a former Labour leader of Tower Hamlets who is close to former London Mayor Ken Livingstone, portrayed himself as an “open socialist” who upset the traditional political order.

And yet some councillors and political experts argue that Mr Rahman’s victory was the result of deep racial and religious division within Tower Hamlets. The Mawrey report in 2015 highlighted concerns that “undue religious influence was exercised so as to convince Muslim voters that it was their religious duty to vote for Mr Rahman”.

Tower Hamlets’ remaining Conservative councillor Peter Golds claims Mr Rahman won by targeting the borough’s Bangladeshi community. He points to the fact that all 24 of Aspire’s newly elected councillors are men with Bangladeshi heritage.

Mr Biggs, who became mayor when Mr Rahman was forced out of office in 2015 and was then re-elected comfortably in 2018, launched a stinging attack on Mr Rahman drawing comparisons between his rival and other “populist” politicians including Boris Johnson, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.

https://www.standard.co.uk/insider/the-shock-return-of-tower-hamlets-divisive-mayor-b999658.html