Congratulations to the new councillor for Spitalfields and Banglatown, G(h)ulam Robbani (if you’re new to this blog and wondering about the spelling, see here). Here he is looking all happy-clappy next to the Mayor earlier this year:
Yes, it was a close-run thing by 43 votes, but at the end of the day this was a by-election in what should be Labour’s heartland and the loss is another blow. That they failed to muster a higher turnout for what was a crucial test for them speaks volumes. Lutfur will be smiling, I’m sure. But will his friend be, Ken Livingstone? (By the way, there at least two journalists also smiling: Robbani has an interesting past… .)
Here are the details of the results from the Tower Hamlets council website
Kirsty BLAKE (Green Party) – 99 votes
Richard Alan MACMILLAN (Liberal Democrats) – 39 votes
Gulam ROBBANI (Independent) – 1030 votes
Matthew James SMITH (Conservative Party) – 140 votes
Ala UDDIN (The Labour Party) – 987 votes
Turnout 31.43 per cent.
So, 2295 votes cast: I need to find to find out how much this cost, so we can quote a figure of £ per vote. It will be the final legacy of Shelina Ak(h)tar’s benefit fraud.
Trial by Jeory 
There needs to be a campaign to save the ‘h’s in Tower Hamlets councillor names, because dropping it is a sure sign of trouble.
– Dhavid Bhoothroyd.
Brilliant. Tower amlets: that’s how it’s pronounced anyway
The Tories, Lib Dems and Greens let this happen with their vanity politics.
It speaks volumes doesn’t it, that the outgoing Lutfur councillor can be convicted of massive benefit fraud and still the voters of Banglatown troop out to vote Lutfur Party? Half of them probably don’t even know what Shelina Akhtar’s done; they certainly don’t read the ELA and find out. The other half don’t care and probably think she’s done nothing wrong.
Would love to know the breakdown fo votes between postals and on-the-day.
An overall swing it seems of around 44% to the independents. Local Labour have some serious soul-searching to do! How and where did they get it so horribly wrong? Anyway I blame some of our inept and tribal Labour councillors as well as their group leader – their personal war with Lutfur only appears to make him stronger. Time to change leader and game plan – I’d prefer Cllr Saunders, she’s a lot more astute and knows how the Bangladeshis operate.
She absolutely does. Take a look at her here! http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=uENI-_xJp4s#
A very interesting video. There is a speaker starting on 5:33sec that was also a former councillor in Tower Hamlets, not very long ago, and was forced out following conviction for fraud (jailed for 18 months for stealing £30,000), along with his brother and one other. They were convicted for stealing money from a youth club that they ran. Interesting how the Labour Party condemn (rightfully so) the independents for having a fraudster in their midst, yet they also have a fraudster in their camp. From what I heard, during the mayoral election, both he and his brothers were key supporters of Abbas and campaigned for him quite intensively, even driving him around the polling stations on polling day. Also most of the food for agents outside polling stations came from the brother’s restaurant in Brick Lane. What hypocrisy from the Labour Party.
With photo 4th article down:
http://www.courtnewsuk.co.uk/online_archive/?name=stepney&page=19
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/5065958.stm
You are right… Labour need to change tactics but reunification with Lutfur is not the answer though. I would be very interested to see how many postal votes there were and the breakdown.
If Robanni “won” because of postal votes then there may have been fraud, again. After all – correct me if I am wrong – but only 22 votes the other way would swing it.
It seems clearer than ever to me now that Labour has permanently lost half or more of the Bengali vote who are now more favourable towards voting for what are ostensibly nationalist politicians be that independent or “Respect” and I cannot see how Labour can meet their demands without betraying whatever they have left of their principles, So, the only option is for Labour to diversify by attracting more votes and a higher turnout from the non-Bengali communities on the fringes of Tower Hamlets politics to make up for the shortfall. They cannot expect the Tories et al to stop fielding candidates but they could get some of the thousands of former Labour voters to vote for them once again but only if they can demonstrate they are not the Bengali-only organisation which many people perceive them to be.
It could do that by better selecting its candidates and understanding that a good candidate does not necessarily have to come from a social, sexual or racial minority to be a electable. Why not choosing “the best speaker”… that would be a novel change. If Labour chose from a broader selection of candidates and dropped this “women only”, “minority only”, “gay only” bollocks it might hope to retain a broader selection of members and they would be better placed to get a broader selection of the electorate out to vote for them.
If, for example, Labour had managed to find one of their number who was prepared to go to (and saw the value in going to) the local pubs and talk to some of the locals in there (and had something to offer) then they may well have found the few extra votes they needed. However, despite avowed intentions once again Labour stayed fixed in the Banglatown Bubble and chased after its own tail instead…
This comment is obviously by Alibor trying to start a fight in the Labour camp. The fact is that most votes won by Robbani are from Lutfur’s friends & family. The results would have been very different anywhere else.
Labour should have chosen a far stronger candidate with good English skills. Wais Islam would be one, but there are others too.
…yes or Tarik Khan
Don’t be silly! Wais supports Lutfur, remember?
Frankly, i would vote anyone but a party tainted with Gordon Brown and his massacre of economy during the ‘boom’ years. I voted for Green, as it wasn’t Labour and she had a nice name…
Re. the last point – Bring on the day when legislation is introduced to surcharge the cost of an election to any councillor or MP who, due to illegal and/or inappropriate behaviour, loses their seat.
I cannot understand for the life of me understand why on earth the taxpayers of Tower Hamlets should have to foot the bill for an election caused by one woman’s greed and total lack of integrity. IMO the cost of this election should be billed to benefit fraudster Shelina Ak(h)tar.
The electorate should be able to expect that all candidates for public office have the necessary integrity to know how to behave while in office. If they do not then they should pay the price for their own greed and save the Council the expense of an election!
If politicians were to be surcharged the cost of their wrongdoing, would we find their behaviour improves? Maybe not – but at least we wouldn’t have to pay the price of their wrong-doing.
This was a stolen election where activists were hovering up postal votes, threatening residents with losing their council home and promising youngsters all sorts of things. I spoke to several young people in the ward yesterday who were voting for Robani because they wanted to keep their EMA – they were also promised a youth center which I dare say won’t materialise.
I think the benefit fraud stuff was spun to help the independents quite cleverly actually. I spoke to 2 of my friends (non Bengali) who were canvassed by Independents who came round with Labour material and told them she was a Labour Cllr that had been jailed and that the Independents were the only ones that could beat Labour here they also said some nasty things about Labours candidate which I won’t repeat.
People who are clued up know what this man is and it won’t be long until his residents do.
James F: “If Labour chose from a broader selection of candidates and dropped this “women only”, “minority only”, “gay only” bollocks it might hope to retain a broader selection of members and they would be better placed to get a broader selection of the electorate out to vote for them”
Tell me more about Labours ‘gay only’ selection policy James. How many LGBT Cllr does the Labour party have? How many LGBT candidates did we field in 2010? If our members and former members in the ward I duno you perhaps actually helped then maybe we would have won. I do find it quite odd that a significant minority of Labour party activists seem to think the party is controlled by some sort of gay mafia in fact a couple of our Cllrs / activists have used that phrase which is a little disturbing.
‘Choosing from a broader selection’ as you call it which is a nice way of saying not fielding so many Bengalis (why not just say that?) you may find that a significant proportion of the Bengali community we’ve managed to retain thus far might go elsewhere. Perhaps women voters might not be so keen on us etc without a balanced slate. The Labour party ought to field a representative field of candidates so no I don’t think it’s ‘Bollocks’.
@david Donoghue : “Labour should have chosen a far stronger candidate with good English skills. Wais Islam would be one, but there are others too”.
Wais Islam is an unbalanced megalomaniac with a history of making antisemitic comments. He rarely lifts a finger for the Labour party unless there is a by election coming up. Given the influx of talent in THLP I doubt Labour would look twice at his application except to double take in astonishment that one man can think himself so important.
“you may find that a significant proportion of the Bengali community we’ve managed to retain thus far might go elsewhere”
Wake up and smell the coffee: they have gone elsewhere.
It is time Labour stopped putting all it’s eggs in one basket and tried to broaden it’s appeal beyond the so-called ‘village politics’ we all know about. It is obvious that Ala Uddin was selected not because he was a winner with the voters Labour needs to attract but because he was someone the senior Bengali members of the party could agree upon. Epic Fail.
The catastrophic flaw in their logic was that in this election more than ever they had to attract non-Bengali votes to win and Ala was not well placed to attract them because most English people struggle to understand anything he is saying. I was at the hustings and this was true to all who were there. He also repeated the same anti-pub/club mantra we have heard coming from many Bengali politicians who don’t care about, partake in nor understand ‘drinking culture’ and offer no solution to our night time problems other than the forced closure of popular venues important to the local economy beyond ‘Banglatown’.
I personally like Ala, I have met him and I voted for him; but in circumstances such as this when Labour cannot depend on only Bengali votes for success it must choose candidates that are likely to attract a broader appeal.
There are other Bengali local party members and officers (Wais and Tarik as aforementioned) who are more eloquent, better able to connect with white voters and whom they could have chosen but alas the party in its ineffable wisdom decided against them, stayed stuck in its ways and thus threw another election away.
A word of advice for John Pierce: Go to every residents association group in Weavers (and I mean the mainly “white” ones, there are four or five of them) attend some of their meetings, be very gracious and humble and tell them what Abjol Miah is all about, be prepared to make promises to those groups and get them to get their members to come out and vote for you. If you ignore these groups and rely on the old network you too are doomed to fail in what would be a tragedy for the people of that ward because as we know the “Independents” and ‘Respect’ have never shown any interest in any communities beyond the narrow confines of their own.
It seems some people quickly forget that Shelina Aktar was voted in by Labour supporters. No matter that she jumped ship – in fact, if you were a Labour supporter, why would you bother to vote when you know that the last candidate your party fielded turned out to be a crook with no party loyalty?
A very good point.
Remind me who are supposed to be the experts at selecting Labour candidates in Tower Hamlets? They don’t seem to be doing a very good job so far. I’ve no reason to suppose the local party could do any better.
Any chance of the future people on candidates lists being those who have a long and established track record of having genuinely worked for their local community at large for some time – with positive results – without recompense or title or any of the other badges of status so beloved by some of the people who pass for politicians in Tower Hamlets.
Is it terribly old fashioned to think that you have to earn people’s respect (in the non-political sense of the word) before you are good enough to represent them?
@Taj
Bloody hell you’re right, I didn’t recognise Naz.
It’s such a shame that Tarik wasn’t the candidate. I had it all worked out and everything; his campaign slogan would have been “Yes We Khan” which naturally I thought was superb
Milosh, I don’t agree re Wais. He is passionate and eloquent. Like anyone he can make mistakes but he is brave enouigh to apologise. He has even written a letter to the East London Advertiser a fortnight ago suggesting a joint universities project to educate local Muslim youth with knowledge of local East End Jewish history as “we have directly benefited from their contribution in society.”
As for the Labour choices so far from 2010 on, they have hardly covered themselves in glory, to say the least. Noice to know about the influx of talent – names please!
Passionate about what? Not the Labour party what has he contributed to the party over the last two years? He turned up to help out at the by-election in a sharp Trilby bolstering his Walter Mitty act got his free curry and rice and then spent most of the day gossiping with Independents.
Maybe I’m reading too much into this but I’ve noticed that when people want to praise activists in the borough they use the word ‘eloquent’ a lot and comment on how well they speak/ how ‘educated’ they are. Those adjectives are never used to describe non-Bengali activists – as if a Bengali being able to string two sentences together is impressive in and of itself. James F contrasted Ala Uddin with Wais and Tariq in a similar way : “There are other Bengali local party members and officers (Wais and Tarik as aforementioned) who are more eloquent, better able to connect with white voters”.
We ought to select candidates who demonstrate a consistent commitment to the Labour party, who work in-between elections who don’t have a history of racist/sexist/homophobic comments irrespective of whether they’ve apologised or not. Tariq yes, Ala yes, Wais… err no.
Maybe I’m too cynical but he probably wrote that article because if you pop his name into Google the second thing that comes up is his antisemitic comments and his potty mouth. Maybe I was wrong to call him a megalomaniac because to be fair he has stopped signing off his Advertiser letters: Wais Islam Former Olympic Ambassador.
I won’t do names to prevent blushes but this is a picture of members out campaigning today for John Pierce (don’t see Wais anywhere) https://p.twimg.com/ArBDOnRCQAAgCAf.jpg <<< Lots of future Cllrs in that picture. We need a clear out and some new talent. Walk slowly but never walk backwards Wais has had his day.
The photo you posted speaks volumes. Labour is clearly targeting the non-Bengali vote…which is good… I bet they get an earful.
As for Wais… I really don’t think he is actually an “anti-semite” and neither – if you are honest – do you. Some people bandy these extremely powerful phrases around far too much and If you take Wais’s comments literally he is presumably also anti-Pakistan and anti-fish. Wais has a sense of humour and shoots from the hip. Sometimes some of the things he says or writes late at night which he thinks are funny may raise eyebrows but let’s face it – Labour people are so much more easily offended than normal human beings. Indeed you offence-monkeys love to take offence so much that they’ll gladly take offence for you even if you’re not offended yourself. They take offence by proxy.
I’ll tell you what offends me much more – Tony Blair removing my right to freedom of speech!
Labour is very sensitive about suspected possible anti-Semitism, unless of course it’s coming from Ken Livingstone in which case they’d rather you forgot about it. There are many thousands of genuine anti-semites in Tower Hamlets who frequently parade about Whitechapel comparing beard length and intimidating young women and Wais is not among them. I always wonder why nobody in Labour ever dares criticise those genuine anti-Semites (based in New Road, E1) who glorify past acts of terrorism (often aimed at Jews) and spend much of the time immersed in a fantasy dressing up party pretending to be the chap who bummed* Lawrence of Arabia.
Wais is a local politician who is better placed than many to campaign amongst both the Bengali and English communities because he is straight talking, eloquent and humorous. These are human qualities which voters appreciate.
*and before you start, no I am not “homophobic”
Test, James F, and Milosh
Re Postal Votes
You raised a key issue for scrutiny. Throughout Friday I requested details of postal returns and was promised these would be emailed to me by the end of the day; nothing arrived. It turns out all the departmental staff were told they could leave early (by 3:30pm) as they had worked so hard on the bi-election the previous day.
Louise Stamp, Manager at Electoral Services returned my telephone call earlier this afternoon to say the information I requested would be emailed to me by 4pm today, Monday 23 April. I’ll post those figures as soon as I receive them.
My understanding of the process is that all votes – polled and posted – are scanned into the council’s files by the end of the polling day, albeit that is involves working into the early hours of the following day. Once scanned and counted, the completed polling forms are held in a secure polling box. It’s unclear whether rejected voting papers are also retained.
With regards processing postal votes, they are opened and checked for completeness and accuracy; this includes the Voting Paper and Polling Vote Statement (PVS). Valid postal votes are then added to the polling station votes to be counted. Unfortunately no record is maintained of whether a vote for a particular candidate is received by post or polling station – I believe this is a weakness. For example we have no record of the postal votes received for a particular candidate. Further we have no record of the rejected votes received for a particular candidate.
It’s disappointing that it takes so long to extract basic information from what, let’s face it, was a small bi-election with a small turnout. It’s also disappointing that we cannot scrutinise invalid submissions to establish which candidates they related to, or how many were rejected. This should surely be part of the due diligence embedded in the process.
Milosh re Wais: I’ve seen him campaigning weekends and for both Jim and Rushanara in their constituencies and most certainly getting out votes all day for Ala Uddin. On voting day he drove his Vote Labour plastered car abd stopped to say ‘hello’ to voters in Commercial Street. He certainly did not spend the day talking to Respect-backed Indies as you slanderously claim. He was one of the top shortlisted candidates for the Spitalfields by-election (which he would have won) and was a loyal Labour activist from the late 90’s when he was an economics undergraduate. You mention ‘names’. What is yours?. Best to ask Ala Uddin or the Tower Hamlets Labour Party itself how hard Wais worked to regain the seat for Labour in this by-election as they will most certainly disagree with you.
David, let’s be realistic. This is what Wais said about me on Facebook in 2010:
As I said later and after he realised the damage that had been done, he apologised and I accepted it. (He also asked me to remove his offending comments from this blog but I declined.)
However, that apology does not, in my view, clear the path for him to hold elected office again. He wrote to me at the time that he was going through some stressful personal issues and explained that he would be taking a long break from politics. From what I understand, his break wasn’t that long.
He may have written a text to me to apologise, but not once, I think I’m right in saying, has he published any explanation via Facebook, this blog or the letter pages of the ELA.
I have been contacted several times by national newspapers about his comments, most recently as three weeks ago.
He and Labour (and Lutfur) should be well aware that should they select him for any ward or any other position, those words will be quoted back at them. Therefore, his political career as an elected politician is over and he should just carry on doing what he seems to like best at the moment: carry on campaigning for other people…
[…] vote returns for last week’s by-election in Spitalfields and Banglatown, which was won by Lutfur Rahman’s candidate G(h)ulam Robbani by 43 votes. The anecdotal evidence posted as comments on this blog suggested that Robbani was way […]
@ James F
Well maybe Wais isn’t an anti-semite but he does a very good impression of one. It’s not just a question of whether something is offensive or not it’s a question of judgment. I don’t think it’s a very good idea for the Labour Party or any others to be associated with somebody that at worst says racist things and at best shows such poor judgment.
I don’t think anybody has a right to represent a political party. If your name conjures up nasty images Lutfur Rahman, Phil Wollas Me’Lord Ahmed then I don’t think you’re suitable.
Ken’s original comments to the Jewish reporter were a distasteful joke. His second comment about ‘Rich Jews’ was an academic point but very insensitively put across – quite different from what Wais did/meant in his comments. Again, it’s not just about causing offence it’s about judgment. Neither Ken nor Wais should be candidates in my opinion – both showed very poor judgment.
Ken wasn’t selected because anybody had any confidence in him he was selected because Oona King was such a poor candidate. Fortunately THLP isn’t in that predicament and has a sea of talent to choose from. Whilst you might place Wais in that category (I don’t) he is so far down on that list that he need never grace our ballot papers again as a Labour candidate. Maybe some other party can make use of his ‘eloquence humour and straight-talking’.
Brothers in politically incorrect arms! I’m surprised Andrew Gilligan hasn’t used it.
@ david donoghue
You only ever see Wais around selection time. Maybe the person I saw after gossiping with independents had a Wais Islam facemask on.
David Donoghue: “He was one of the top place candidates for Spitalfelds by election (which he would have won)”.
You might be right Wais may very well of been one of the top shortlisted candidates. That probably has more to do with the list he was selected from. It was a stale long list from 2010. Some might call it the dregs of the barrel of candidates that didn’t/couldn’t get elected first time around. In fact the powers that be in the Labour party were so bereft of talent on that list that they felt that they had to spend £600 + inviting new members to put their names forward. So maybe Wais was the best of a bad lot. The point I’m trying to underline here is THLP now has lots of talented people to choose from. I don’t think they’ll ever find themselves in a situation where we’d have to select somebody with Wais’ history.
I really wish people would stop talking about how eloquent somebody is or what degree they have as part justification for running for the council. You don’t need a degree to be a Cllr and you don’t have to be eloquent you ought to be committed and display good judgment.
I’d rather not have somebody send the boys round to duff me up so I’ll pass on giving you my name. I’m sure Wais will be sympathetic to the use of an alias he stood in 2006 as ‘Waiseul Islam Otherwise Known as: Wais’ : http://www.towerhamlets.gov.uk/idoc.ashx?docid=5e7a2625-77aa-4121-b601-652b2b7a0ca2&version=-1
Wais isn’t the only one, and to be fair to him he isn’t the worst I could quote sexist /homophobic/ racist comments from sitting Cllrs and activists and even a very high profile conservative candidate but it would just be hearsay. Wais is notorious and that’s why I singled him out, it’s all in the public domain and it’s precisely because he is notorious that I don’t think we’ll ever be calling upon his services again.
There’s a saying that you should learn to dance at home before you go abroad. We have far to many figures in Tower Hamlets who don’t know how to conduct themselves in public and it’s a shame because many of them including Wais had/have a lot to offer.