Who will win the Tower Hamlets mayoral election?

The Tower Hamlets mayoral election is one of the most intriguing contests scheduled for local elections day this year (5 May). It features a re-match between the only two people to have held the office: John Biggs (the Labour incumbent) vs Lutfur Rahman.

Rahman was the winner of the first ever contest back in 2010. Although initially selected as the Labour candidate (beating Biggs in a Tower Hamlets Labour Party vote) he was later removed by the NEC. He went on to stand as an independent and managed to win with over 50% in the first round of voting. He was re-elected in 2014, beating John Biggs by 4.5% in the second round before that vote was declared void by an election court who found him guilty of corrupt and illegal practices. As a result of that decision, Rahman was barred from holding office for five years. Biggs won the resulting by-election and was re-elected by a very wide margin in 2018.

On to this year, and Rahman is back once again to challenge John Biggs. It looks as if he'll be standing under the banner of Aspire, a party he set up in 2018 - they won a by-election in the borough as recently as August last year. Rahman already appears to have the backing of some well known names on the left; Aaron Bastani and Ken Livingstone have appeared in his social media campaigning. It'll be interesting to see whether Jeremy Corbyn might do the same now that he is free of the Labour whip.

This is a very hard race to call. A recent poll has put Labour 30 points ahead of the Tories in London but that's unlikely to make much difference in the unique circumstances of Tower Hamlets. No doubt the Labour campaign will be keen to remind people of their opponent's history of electoral fraud but it's impossible to know how significant that will be with voters.

Smarkets HQ is situated in the borough so we will be taking a particular interest in this contest. The opening odds make Labour slight favourites and give Rahman about a 40% chance of becoming mayor once again.