As political comebacks go, it’s right up there. On May 5, Lutfur Rahman was elected Mayor of Tower Hamlets a mere seven years after he was ousted from office and barred for five years, having been being found guilty by a special electoral court of corrupt and illegal practices during the 2014 elections. His new Aspire Party also took control of the council.
But, as our political and deputy political editors Nicholas Cecil and David Bond reveal, a new report by the independent electoral monitoring group Democracy Volunteers, which observed voting at 96 of the borough’s 109 ballot boxes, found that while some improvements had been secured since 2014, further work was necessary.
