Tower hamlets

Friday

Lloyd Evans

How has Tower Hamlets really spent my council tax?

How does Tower Hamlets spend my council tax? I’ve been shoveling cash at them for 19 years so I strolled along to the new town hall to find out where the money goes. The new town hall cost a packet, clearly. Carved out of the Royal London Hospital, the spacious lobby looks cool, stylish and reassuringly anonymous, like a private bank in Zurich. Glass doors swish apart and I enter the debating chamber where the councillors sit at a curved monodesk opposite the public gallery. Everything is slick and hypermodern. The pristine floor glows beneath the recessed lights. I had expected an ordinary meeting but I seem to have stumbled on an important debate.

tower hamlets

Wednesday

Lloyd Evans

How has Tower Hamlets really spent my council tax?

How does Tower Hamlets spend my council tax? I’ve been shovelling cash at them for 19 years so I strolled along to the new town hall to find out where the money goes. The new town hall cost a packet, clearly. Carved out of the Royal London Hospital, the spacious lobby looks cool, stylish and reassuringly anonymous, like a private bank in Zurich. Glass doors swish apart and I enter the debating chamber where the councillors sit at a curved mono-desk opposite the public gallery. Everything is slick and hyper-modern. The pristine floor glows beneath the recessed lights. I had expected an ordinary meeting but I seem to have stumbled on an important debate.

Wednesday

Matthew Parris

With a shudder, I’m voting Labour in the local elections

From our UK edition

You may be disturbed by a column urging whites (among others) to vote as a bloc in the coming local elections in the London borough of Tower Hamlets. Tactical voting, but not as we’ve known it. I realise this is delicate. But I’ve been conscious of a dilemma over where to put my cross on the ballot for mayor, which would normally be with the Conservative. And it’s with a shudder that I say that, using my postal vote, I have just voted Labour. For a single, simple reason. Non-Bengali-speakers in the borough must unite if the rascal who has established himself as a favourite son among the Bangladeshi community is to be confounded.

Thursday

Douglas Murray

Don’t fear the bogeyman

From our UK edition

Britain is beset by a bogeyman. A giant, mystical beast that the public are forever being threatened with. Remember last year when a young Welsh choirboy stabbed three young girls to death at a Taylor Swift-themed dance party in Southport? Long before we were allowed to know the name of the culprit – Axel Rudakubana – we were warned about a much greater menace: a rallying by the ‘far right’. After impromptu protests and some rioting broke out in various cities, we were promised on an hourly basis that the ‘far right’ was mobilising. Soon there were crowds of Muslim men organising to counter any such threat.

Friday

Katy Balls

The Julia Lopez Edition

From our UK edition

33 min listen

Julia Lopez has been the Conservative MP for Hornchurch and Upminster since 2017. Her first political experience was working for the then-MP for the Cities of London and Westminster Mark Field, before she became a councillor for Tower Hamlets – working to improve the standards of an area marred in scandal and heightened community tensions. She went on to hold ministerial roles under three Prime Ministers and is now the PPS to Tory leader Kemi Badenoch.On the podcast, Julia talks to Katy Balls about the impact Margaret Thatcher had on the politics of her family, how she gained political experience touring London’s sewers and skyscrapers, and the mixed emotions of becoming an MP in 2017 – when the party lost its majority.

Sunday

Steerpike

Lib Dems take a leaf out of Labour’s book

From our UK edition

'Secret election pact to stitch up Boris' roars the front page of today's Mail on Sunday. Ahead of Thursday's local elections, Oliver Dowden, the Conservative party's chairman, has written an angry letter to Sir Keir Starmer. He claims Labour is standing down candidates ‘in swathes of the country’ where Lib Dem support is strong to avoid splitting the anti-Tory vote. His fellow knight, Sir Ed Davey, is accused of doing the same where Labour is dominant elsewhere. Playing politics in an election campaign? It'll never catch on. It marks a change of course from, er, Thursday when Labour were found to have spent a small fortune on online adverts attacking the Lib Dems.

Sunday

Steerpike

Lutfur Rahman expected to launch mayoral bid

From our UK edition

Readers with long memories might recall the shambles of Tower Hamlets' election night in 2014, when the count took more than five days to complete. The man who was re-elected as mayor that day was Lutfur Rahman who, the following year, earned the dubious distinction of being Britain’s first directly elected mayor to be removed after being found guilty of electoral fraud. Rahman was slapped with a five-year ban on standing for elected office after the Election Court reported him to be ‘personally guilty’ of ‘corrupt or illegal practices or both.’ Now though, Rahman's ban is completed, and his former office is up for grabs in May.

Wednesday

Steerpike

The return of Lutfur Rahman

From our UK edition

Remember Lutfur Rahman? In 2015 the then mayor of Tower Hamlets earned the dubious distinction of being Britain’s first directly elected mayor to be removed after being found guilty of electoral fraud. Rahman was slapped with a five-year ban on standing for elected office after the Election Court reported him to be ‘personally guilty’ of ‘corrupt or illegal practices or both.’ Judge Richard Mawrey said he'd ‘driven a coach and horses through election law and didn't care’ while his party Tower Hamlets First, was ‘never really a party but the alter ego of Lutfur Rahman’.