Labour’s John Biggs becomes the directly elected mayor of the London borough of Tower Hamlets, in an election called after the previous mayor was removed from office.
He lost last year to independent Lutfur Rahman, who was convicted of electoral fraud and told to stand down in April reported BBC.
Mr Rahman was banned from the new vote.
Mr Biggs won 32,754 votes, including second preference votes, to beat independent Rabina Khan. He said the borough now needed to “move forwards”.
Speaking after the overnight count at London’s ExCel conference centre, the new mayor said: “What is important in Tower Hamlets is that we recognise the events of the past year or more have caused enormous tension and friction in our great borough and we need… to pull things back together again.”
The Labour win in Tower Hamlets marks, for many here, the beginning of a new start. Branded a “rotten borough” just seven weeks ago when Lutfur Rahman was removed for corrupt election practices, this is a council that’s been mired in accusations of murky leadership.
So John Biggs has a huge job on his hands to rebuild faith in local politics and redeem the damaged reputation left behind by the former executive mayor.
But this victory means even more to Labour than that, because Tower Hamlets is safe Labour territory in terms of parliamentary elections and yet the party had lost control of the borough in 2010 to a man who had for many years been one of their own councillors.