Mayor of Tower Hamlets | |
---|---|
Style | No courtesy title or style |
Appointer | Electorate of Tower Hamlets |
Term length | Four years |
Inaugural holder | Lutfur Rahman |
Formation | May 2010 referendum |
The mayor of Tower Hamlets is the directly elected mayor of Tower Hamlets London Borough Council in east London, England. The first election for this position occurred on 21 October 2010, taking on the executive function of the borough council. The position is different from the previous largely ceremonial, annually appointed mayors of Tower Hamlets, who became known as the 'Chair of Council' after the first election and are now known as the 'Speaker of Council'. [1] The second election was held on 22 May 2014, the same day as the Tower Hamlets Council election, other United Kingdom local elections, and European Parliament elections, but the election result was declared void by the election court. A by-election was held on 11 June 2015.
The proposal to change the status of the borough from one with a leader and cabinet to one with an executive mayor was initially opposed by all the main political parties and was an initiative only proposed and supported by the Respect Party. Islamic Forum Europe organised a petition to trigger a referendum for this change. [2] Council officers stated that almost half the signatures were invalid, with entire pages bearing the same handwriting. Despite the flaws in the petition, there were sufficient valid signatures for the council to accept it, and a referendum was held on 6 May 2010 simultaneously with the voting in the United Kingdom general election. The referendum was passed after an intensive campaign. [2]
Choice | Votes | % |
---|---|---|
Elected Mayor | 60,758 | 59.67 |
Cabinet System | 39,857 | 39.15 |
Ballot paper(s) rejected | 1,203 | 1.18 |
Total votes | 100,615 | 100.00 |
Source: https://democracy.towerhamlets.gov.uk/mgElectionAreaResults.aspx?ID=147&RPID=0 |
Writing in the Sunday Telegraph on 17 October, Andrew Gilligan represented the forthcoming election as the first big test for the recently elected Labour leader Ed Miliband, given the possibility of an independent candidate defeating the official Labour candidate in a strong Labour borough. Gilligan also said that it raised concerns over the political power of radical Islam in the UK, because of candidate Lutfur Rahman's connections with Islamic Forum Europe. The latter, along with local business interests which had supported the petition and referendum to have a mayor, prominently backed Rahman's campaign. [2] Labour's former London Mayor, Ken Livingstone, also campaigned in support of Rahman, in breach of Labour Party rules. [3]
Choice | Votes | % |
---|---|---|
Keep, By a mayor who is elected by voters. | 63,029 | 74.66 |
Change, By a leader who is an elected councillor chosen by a vote of the other elected councillors. | 17,951 | 21.26 |
Ballot paper(s) rejected | 3,444 | 4.08 |
Total votes | 80,980 | 100.00 |
Source: https://www.eastlondonadvertiser.co.uk/news/local-council/referendum-result-to-keep-tower-hamlets-mayor-7958210 |
The first election took place on Thursday 21 October 2010, with a 25.6 per cent turn out. [4] The new mayor officially took office on Monday 25 October 2010. [5]
Tower Hamlets mayoral election 21 October 2010 [4] | |||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Party | Candidate | 1st round | 2nd round | First round votes Transfer votes | |||||
Total | Of round | Transfers | Total | Of round | |||||
Independent | Lutfur Rahman | 23,283 | 51.8% | | |||||
Labour | Helal Uddin Abbas | 11,254 | 25.0% | | |||||
Conservative | Neil King | 5,348 | 11.9% | | |||||
Liberal Democrats | John Griffiths | 2,800 | 6.2% | | |||||
Green | Alan Duffell | 2,300 | 5.1% | | |||||
Turnout | 46,719 | 25.60% | Rejected ballots: 1,734 | ||||||
Registered electors | 182,482 | ||||||||
Independent win |
In April 2015, this election was declared void by an election court. [6]
Tower Hamlets Mayoral Election 22 May 2014 (since declared void by an election court [7] ) [8] | ||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Party | Candidate | 1st round | 2nd round | First round votes Transfer votes | ||||
Total | Of round | Transfers | Total | Of round | ||||
Tower Hamlets First | Lutfur Rahman | 36,539 | 43.38% | 856 | 37,395 | 52.27% | | |
Labour | John Biggs | 27,643 | 32.82% | 6,500 | 34,143 | 47.73% | | |
Conservative | Christopher Wilford | 7,173 | 8.52% | | ||||
UKIP | Nicholas McQueen | 4,819 | 5.72% | | ||||
Green | Chris Smith | 4,699 | 5.58% | | ||||
Liberal Democrats | Reetendra Banerji | 1,959 | 2.33% | | ||||
TUSC | Hugo Pierre | 871 | 1.03% | | ||||
Independent | Reza Choudhury | 205 | 0.24% | | ||||
Independent | Mohammed Khan | 164 | 0.19% | | ||||
Independent | Hafiz Kadir | 162 | 0.19% | | ||||
Turnout | 86,540 | 47.58% | Rejected ballots: 2,306 | |||||
Registered electors | 181,871 | |||||||
Void election result |
After the 2014 election was declared void, a new election was held on 11 June 2015. [6] [7] [9] [10]
Tower Hamlets Mayoral by-election, 2015 [11] | ||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Party | Candidate | 1st round | 2nd round | First round votes Transfer votes | ||||
Total | Of round | Transfers | Total | Of round | ||||
Labour | John Biggs [12] | 27,255 | 40.00% | 5,499 | 32,754 | 55.39% | | |
Independent | Rabina Khan [13] | 25,763 | 37.81% | 621 | 26,384 | 44.61% | | |
Conservative | Peter Golds | 5,940 | 8.72% | | ||||
Green | John Foster [14] | 2,678 | 3.93% | | ||||
Liberal Democrats | Elaine Bagshaw | 2,152 | 3.16% | | ||||
Red Flag Anti-Corruption | Andy Erlam | 1,768 | 2.59% | | ||||
UKIP | Nicholas McQueen | 1,669 | 2.45% | | ||||
Independent | Hafiz Kadir | 316 | 0.46% | | ||||
Animal Welfare | Vanessa Hudson | 305 | 0.45% | | ||||
Independent | Md. Motiur Rahman Nanu | 292 | 0.43% | | ||||
Turnout | 69,643 | 37.73% | Rejected ballots: 1,505 | |||||
Registered electors | 184,563 | |||||||
Labour gain from Independent |
Councillor Rabina Khan initially announced that she would stand as the Tower Hamlets First candidate. [15] However, as a result of findings in the election court case against Lutfur Rahman, Tower Hamlets First was removed from the register of political parties by the Electoral Commission as the party was not operating a responsible financial scheme and the running of the party did not follow the documentation given in the party's registration. [16] [17] Khan subsequently stood as an independent candidate.
Andy Erlam is a writer and film-maker who led the legal action against Rahman which resulted in the previous election being declared void. He had previously stood elsewhere as a Parliamentary candidate [18] for Labour,[ citation needed ] then as the first candidate fielded by "Red Flag Anti-Corruption" in the Tower Hamlets Council elections on 22 May 2014. [19] Red Flag Anti-Corruption had also fielded two parliamentary candidates in the 2015 UK general election, [20] Jason Pavlou for Bethnal Green and Bow and Rene Claudel Mugenzi for Poplar and Limehouse, both within Tower Hamlets.
Liberal Democrat Elaine Bagshaw and UKIP candidate Nicholas McQueen both stood for their respective parties in Poplar and Limehouse at the 2015 general election.
Tower Hamlets mayoral election 3 May 2018 [21] | ||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Party | Candidate | 1st round | 2nd round | First round votes Transfer votes | ||||
Total | Of round | Transfers | Total | Of round | ||||
Labour | John Biggs | 37,619 | 48.43% | 7,246 | 44,865 | 72.66% | | |
PATH | Rabina Khan | 13,113 | 16.88% | 3,765 | 16,878 | 27.34% | | |
Aspire | Ohid Ahmed | 11,109 | 14.30% | | ||||
Conservative | Anwara Ali | 6,149 | 7.92% | | ||||
Liberal Democrats | Elaine Bagshaw | 5,598 | 7.21% | | ||||
Green | Ciaran Jebb | 3,365 | 4.33% | | ||||
TUSC | Hugo Pierre | 728 | 0.94% | | ||||
Turnout | 80,252 | 41.96% | Rejected ballots: 2,571 | |||||
Registered electors | 191,244 | |||||||
Labour hold |
John Biggs defended the seat for Labour. Following a split in the former Tower Hamlets First group, Cllr Rabina Khan stood again, as the candidate for her new party, the People's Alliance of Tower Hamlets (PATH) while Cllr Ohid Ahmed stood for Aspire, which emerged from the post-Tower Hamlets First Tower Hamlets Independent Group. [22] The Conservative Party selected Dr Anwara Ali MBE, a local GP [23] and, until 2010, local Labour councillor. [24] The Liberal Democrats selected Elaine Bagshaw, their 2015 candidate. [25] In August 2018, Khan wound up PATH and joined the Liberal Democrats. [26]
Biggs sought to defend his seat for Labour. In January 2022, Liberal Democrat councillor Rabina Khan was announced as the party's candidate for the mayoralty. [27] Independent councillor Andrew Wood, who had resigned from the Conservative group in 2020, announced he would stand for election as both a councillor and mayor. [28] Former mayor of the borough, Lutfur Rahman, announced his candidacy for the Aspire party in February 2022. [29] Rahman's five-year ban from standing for election, having been found guilty by an election court of "corrupt and illegal practices", had elapsed. [30] [31] He was endorsed at his formal campaign launch in March by the former mayor of London Ken Livingstone and the peer Pola Uddin. [32] Rahman won the election with a final vote share of 54.9%, unseating incumbent John Biggs and taking the mayoralty for the second time.
Tower Hamlets mayoral election 5 May 2022 [33] | ||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Party | Candidate | 1st round | 2nd round | First round votes Transfer votes | ||||
Total | Of round | Transfers | Total | Of round | ||||
Aspire | Lutfur Rahman | 39,533 | 46.99% | 1,271 | 40,804 | 54.90% | | |
Labour | John Biggs | 27,894 | 33.20% | 5,593 | 33,487 | 45.10% | | |
Liberal Democrats | Rabina Khan | 6,430 | 7.65% | | ||||
Conservative | Elliott Weaver | 4,269 | 5.07% | | ||||
Independent | Andrew Wood | 3,985 | 4.74% | | ||||
TUSC | Hugo Pierre | 1,462 | 1.74% | | ||||
Independent | Pamela Holmes | 552 | 0.66% | | ||||
Turnout | 84,125 | 41.92% | Rejected ballots: 1,864 | |||||
Registered electors | 205,189 | |||||||
Aspire gain from Labour |
Political party | Name | Term of office & mandate | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Independent | Lutfur Rahman | 25 October 2010 | 23 April 2015 | 2010 | |
Tower Hamlets First (2013–15) | |||||
(2014) [lower-alpha 1] | |||||
4 years and 181 days | |||||
Labour Co-op | John Biggs | 15 June 2015 | 8 May 2022 | 2015 | |
2018 | |||||
6 years and 328 days | |||||
Aspire | Lutfur Rahman | 9 May 2022 | Incumbent | 2022 | |
1 day |
The London Borough of Tower Hamlets is a London borough covering much of the traditional East End. It was formed in 1965 from the merger of the former metropolitan boroughs of Stepney, Poplar, and Bethnal Green. 'Tower Hamlets' was originally an alternative name for the historic Tower Division; the area of south-east Middlesex, focused on the area of the modern borough, which owed military service to the Tower of London.
John Robert Biggs is a British Labour Co-op politician who was Mayor of Tower Hamlets between 2015 and 2022.
Sir Robert Andrew "Robin" Wales is a British Labour Party politician who served as the directly elected mayor of the London Borough of Newham from 2002 to 2018. Prior to taking up that newly created role, he was leader of Newham council since 1995, having been a councillor from 1982 to 1986 and 1992 to 2002.
Richard Mawrey, QC is a barrister and Deputy High Court Judge in the United Kingdom. He is a bencher of Gray's Inn and a member of Henderson Chambers. In his role as a judge in election cases, he has repeatedly criticised the postal voting system in the United Kingdom.
Mohammad Lutfur Rahman, known as Lutfur Rahman, is a Bangladesh-born British politician and former solicitor serving as the directly elected mayor of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets for the Aspire party since 2022, having previously held the post from 2010 to 2015.
Tower Hamlets London Borough Council, the local authority for the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, is elected every four years.
Tower Hamlets London Borough Council is the local authority for the London Borough of Tower Hamlets in Greater London, England. The council is unusual in that its executive function is controlled by a directly elected mayor of Tower Hamlets, currently Lutfur Rahman.
Rabina Khan is a Bangladeshi-born British writer, politician, councillor for Shadwell, former Cabinet Member for Housing in Tower Hamlets Council, community worker and author of Ayesha's Rainbow. In 2015, she unsuccessfully contested the Tower Hamlets Mayoral Election. She was the leader of the People's Alliance of Tower Hamlets, but joined the Liberal Democrats on 29 August 2018.
Elections to Tower Hamlets London Borough Council took place on 22 May 2014, the same day as other United Kingdom local elections, the election of the directly elected mayor of Tower Hamlets, and the European Parliament elections. Voting in Blackwall & Cubitt Town Ward was postponed due to the death of a candidate.
Tower Hamlets First was a British political party represented in Tower Hamlets London Borough Council, which was launched to contest the 2014 local elections in the Borough. During its existence, it was the second largest party on Tower Hamlets Council and the fifth largest political party out of all the London borough councils.
Erlam and others v Rahman and another [2015] EWHC 1215 (QB) is an English election court case challenging the 2014 election of Lutfur Rahman as the Mayor of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. On 23 April 2015, Election Commissioner Richard Mawrey voided Rahman's election under the Representation of the People Act 1983 on the grounds of corrupt and illegal practices by him and his agents, and general corruption so extensively prevailing so to reasonably supposed to have affected the election. Rahman's official election agent Alibor Choudhury was ordered to vacate his own office of councillor in the ward of Stepney Green for being guilty of corrupt and illegal practices.
The 2018 London local elections took place in London on 3 May 2018 as part of wider local elections in England. All London borough councillor seats were up for election. Elections to the Corporation of London were held in 2017. Mayoral contests were also held in Hackney, Lewisham, Newham and Tower Hamlets. The previous London borough elections were in 2014.
The People's Alliance of Tower Hamlets (PATH) was a minor political party in Tower Hamlets, London, England composed of councillors who had formerly been members of Tower Hamlets First and then the Tower Hamlets Independent Group. The group was formed by Cllr Rabina Khan and her husband Cllr Aminur Khan as a split from the Tower Hamlets Independent Group in November 2016. Khan disbanded the party in 29 August 2018 and later joined the Liberal Democrats.
Aspire is a local political party in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets formed by the then former mayor Lutfur Rahman and councillors elected as members of his party, Tower Hamlets First. After Tower Hamlets First was removed from the register of political parties following voting fraud and malpractice, its councillors formed the Tower Hamlets Independent Group (THIG). After some defections, the remaining Tower Hamlets Independent Group councillors registered formally as a political party in January 2018. Most of its elected members were former Labour Party members, with a few exceptions.
Elections to Tower Hamlets London Borough Council were held on 3 May 2018, the same day as other borough council elections in London. The directly elected mayor of Tower Hamlets was also up for election.
The 2022 London local elections took place on 5 May 2022, as part of the 2022 United Kingdom local elections. All London borough councillor seats were up for election. Mayoral elections took place in Hackney, Lewisham, Newham and Tower Hamlets, with Croydon electing a mayor for the first time following a local referendum in October 2021.
In the 2022 Croydon London Borough Council election, on 5 May 2022, all 70 members of Croydon London Borough Council, and the Mayor of Croydon, were up for election. The elections took place alongside the local elections in the other London boroughs and elections to local authorities across the United Kingdom. Jason Perry of the Conservative Party narrowly won the mayoral election.
The 2022 Islington London Borough Council election took place on 5 May 2022. All 51 members of Islington London Borough Council were be elected. The elections took place alongside local elections in the other London boroughs and elections to local authorities across the United Kingdom.
The 2022 Lewisham London Borough Council election is currently taking place as of 5 May 2022. All 54 members of Lewisham London Borough Council will be elected. The elections will take place alongside local elections in the other London boroughs and elections to local authorities across the United Kingdom.
The 2022 Tower Hamlets London Borough Council election took place on 5 May 2022. All 45 members of Tower Hamlets London Borough Council were elected. The elections took place alongside local elections in the other London boroughs and elections to local authorities across the United Kingdom.
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