London Evening Standard
London
New Tower Hamlets mayor John Biggs yesterday vowed to clean up the scandal-hit London borough after clinching a dramatic election victory.
He pledged to oust supporters of the disgraced former mayor Lutfur Rahman from the council’s cabinet.
Labour’s Biggs defeated his rival Rabina Khan following a bitterly fought campaign marred by fresh claims of malpractice and a police investigation. Independent Khan was backed by Rahman, who in April was convicted of electoral fraud and dumped from office.
Speaking after his victory was confirmed at 5am, Biggs said the win vindicated a campaign against what he called Rahman’s “corruption and illegal practices”.
He promised to restore confidence and lamented the “enormous tension and friction” between communities that he said the previous regime fomented.
Biggs told the Standard: “People’s trust in the council has been fundamentally undermined. We can rebuild this trust. We need to establish a solid leadership based on transparency, openness and respect of our communities.
“We need to be an outward-looking council concerned with what it does rather than an inward council just focused on maintaining its power bases.”
He said he would reform the mayor’s office rather than scrap it all together, despite abuses that took place under Rahman. The victor turned a 3,252-vote defeat to Rahman’s Tower Hamlets First party in 2014 into a 6,370-vote win over Khan. He took 27,255 votes in the first round against her 25,763 but then pulled away when second preferences came into play.
Biggs received 5,499 in the second round compared with just 621 for Khan, indicating her campaign failed to reach beyond her core vote.
Khan campaigned after Rahman was banned from standing for five years and his Tower Hamlets First party was barred from the political register.
She had to stand as an independent, albeit one elected to the council in 2014 as a Tower Hamlets First candidate.
In 2014, Biggs fought false accusations of racism. Yesterday Khan, cabinet member for housing, said the Labour man only won because he had the “political apparatus, whereby I’m a woman, an independent candidate”.
Peter Golds, the Conservative candidate and Tory group leader, said: “At last the London borough of Tower Hamlets is rejoining London. For five years the borough has had its head in the sand, introverted, tragically corrupt, tragically indifferent to the needs of so many people.”
Andy Erlam, who led the battle to oust Rahman to the high court, said the result was “a victory for democracy in Tower Hamlets” but there was “still much work to do to root out corruption in the borough.”