Can the poison and paranoia be drained from Tower Hamlets politics?

The Labour government is taking a different approach to dealing with recurring problems at the Town Hall and beyond

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The politics of the East End have never been known for being dull. That is a decorous way of saying they have frequently been factional and fraught. They have also often been suspected of malfeasance and subject to interventions from above.

The latest example came in January when the government announced that what it called “ministerial envoys” would be dispatched to Tower Hamlets to, in the words of local government minister Jim McMahon, “tackle deeply rooted and persistent issues”. This followed McMahon’s receipt the previous summer of a report on the workings of the borough’s council by inspectors commissioned by Michael Gove, in one of the final acts of his political career.

It wasn’t all bad. But it raised “serious concerns” in the areas of leadership, culture, governance and partnership. McMahon observed that it had found that “a lack of respect and co-operation between political parties” and a “suspicious and defensive” political leadership had contributed to a Town Hall culture that was “toxic” and disabled by an endemic lack of trust. They found a wellspring of poison and paranoia.

In keeping with the politesse of public statements he wasn’t named. But at the centre of all this was the Mayor of Tower Hamlets, Lutfur Rahman. His has been one of the more extraordinary careers in London local government this century.

The council’s Labour leader from 2008 until 2010, Rahman was, in that same year, removed as his party’s candidate to be the borough’s first directly-elected Mayor following claims that he had secured the nomination by dubious means.

He responded by running as an Independent, and won with lots to spare. He won again in 2014 despite a deluge of media allegations of sundry improprieties and Islamist sympathies, but a subsequent legal challenge led to his removal from office the following year.

The 2014 outcome was declared void and a fresh mayoral election saw Labour’s John Biggs, himself a former council leader, become Mayor. Rahman, a solicitor, was banned from seeking public office for five years. Then, in May 2022, he made an astounding comeback, winning the mayoral race as the candidate of local party Aspire, which he leads.

But, unhappily for Rahman, some of same old criticisms made a comeback too. This began with a 2023 Local Government Association “peer challenge” report. It praised the council’s approach to communications and its delivery of some manifesto commitments, notably free school meals and an educational maintenance allowance for low income sixth-formers and students.

Even so, its 18 recommendations for improvement described a detrimental “lack of trust between the Mayor’s office and senior officers” leading to duplication, frustration and a “two council culture”. There was mistrust, too, between some councillors and officers. None of this helped with getting things done.

Then, in February 2024, came Gove’s decision to send in inspectors, a further case of history repeating itself. Ten years earlier, during the run up to the mayoral election of 2014, one of Gove’s Conservative predecessors, Eric Pickles, dispatched a team from PwC to the East End with a fanfare of a type not often inspired by accountants.

Pickles declaimed about a “culture of cronyism” reflecting a “partisan community politics” that was “to the detriment of integration” – code for alleging that Rahman ran the council for the benefit of his supporters among local Bangladeshi Londoners, of which he is one.

What the PWC team found was that, in particular, grant-giving, property transactions and spending on publicity were “at risk of abuse” due to weaknesses in governance arrangements. By then, Rahman had completed his second mayoral triumph, but its erasure from the record books would soon come.

And so, here we are again: again, Lutfur Rahman is Mayor of Tower Hamlets; again, a national government probe has raised concerns about the way Tower Hamlets Council is run under his command; again, national government has inserted Town Hall appointees.

What are the chances of a different, better and more lasting outcome this time round for a London borough that contains both the opulence of Canary Wharf and some of the highest poverty rates in the country?

McMahon acknowledged that Gove’s initiative had come about because it looked as if past improvements, completed under Biggs, were imperilled. However, unlike Pickles, he avowed an approach to ensuring that councils everywhere function well “that is not punitive and is based on genuine partnership”, Tower Hamlets not excepted.

The government isn’t just asking nicely: it has issued directions under the Local Government Act of 1999 and the envoys’ job is to make sure they are followed. But the tone and the approach are rather different.

Formally, the council has been found to be failing to discharge its legal “best value duty“, including good governance, “continuous improvement” and a positive organisational culture. Crudely translated, Rahman has been told to spend less time bunkered with an inner circle of loyalists preoccupied with important but quite parochial policies and rather more on being transparent, efficient and collaborative.

The task of the envoys is to help them do it, “acting as advisers, mentors and monitors”, as the government’s explanatory memorandum puts it. Kim Bromley-Derry, a former chief executive of next-door Newham who had been Gove’s lead inspector, is now McMahon’s head envoy, leading a team of seasoned local government professionals.

Historical context is important here, some of it already sketched in. It is hard to overstate the legacy of often vicious in-fighting that has marred political activism in Tower Hamlets this century in the largely poor, most inner city parts of a borough that lies a stone’s throw from the wealth of the Square Mile.

That has left many people wounded. Rahman, love him or loathe him, is among them. One highly-experienced London government figure who, despite being very different politically and temperamentally, knows him quite well, has described the shattering effects on his life of the controversies he’s been embroiled in.

There are two other important things to note. One is that some of the more spectacular claims made against Rahman in the past, such as benefiting from widespread vote-rigging and improper financial dealings, have either come unstuck – see also here – or not been substantiated by the otherwise damning election court judgement that removed him from power in 2015.

The other is that support for him among his loyal local voters is large, genuine and deep. The enthusiasm for him I witnessed when I joined him on a Whitechapel Road campaign walkabout in 2015 was real and rare – and, it would appear, is undiminished, even though the councillor majority Aspire won in 2022 has since disappeared.

He is accused of giving undue and even improper attention to those supporters. It might, though, be objected that all politicians, including those in London boroughs, cultivate their electoral base.

In some ways, Rahman is a product of an East End history that goes back half a century, to a very dark time when Bengali Londoners, many newly arrived in the city, had to organise their own defence against the racist violence of the National Front.

Much has changed since then, and for the better. But the legacy of a community politics that was brave and necessary in the 1970s can today take the form of a neurotic introversion that may not serve the best interests of those who are supposed to be its beneficiaries. John Biggs wanted Tower Hamlets to be outward-looking. Lutfur Rahman seems to have other ideas. Can Labour’s envoys talk him out of them?