For their own rather different reasons, the Conservatives and Labour both have a chip on their shoulder about Aspire in Tower Hamlets and the “party’s” mayor Lutfur Rahman. Reading The Best Value Inspection report of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets commissioned by Michael Gove I was transported back to an earlier attempt to create an alternative to Labour in Tower Hamlets.

“10.15 The chairing of meetings at times is poor and disorganised, although this improving. A number of female councillors raised concerns about being shut down, or not being given the opportunity to speak.”

Some things don’t seem to change.

Given how fundamental patronage, dodgy money, influence peddling and tightly knit anti-democratic cliques are to how Labour and the Tories do politics this critique of how things are done in Tower Hamlets should be read with a bit of cynicism, as should the appointment of a government envoy (sic) to monitor how its findings are implemented. However, many of the points made are undeniably true. Therein lies one of the major problems of Aspire’s mild social democracy in one borough project.

One of Gove’s intentions when he tasked the inspection team was to rummage around for evidence of Islamist extremism and one of the inspectors John Jenkins, former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, has form on his views on Muslims getting involved in the wrong sort of politics. Anyone who can hop the paywall of the unhinged Daily Telegraph can read his article For Islamists, Jeremy Corbyn is a useful idiot and he approved of an article called “You started a war, you’ll get a Nakba” according to Middle East Eye. The presence with someone with those views on the team goes some way to explaining why the report dwells so heavily on how people in Tower Hamlets are reacting to the genocide in Gaza. Middle East Eye also reports that Aspire councillors were asked “direct questions about their opinions on Gaza, what their views were about the Palestinian flags being put up in Tower Hamlets, if they helped put them up and what their political backgrounds were”.

Having once had a bit of a dong dong outside a mosque with people connected with Hizb ut-Tahrir years ago, I can confirm that real extremists despise Muslims who take part in electoral politics. Gove knows this as well as I do.

Corruption and dodgy dealings

It is hard not to conclude that Gove and the Tories were as much motivated by a hatred of a local political leadership which was seen to be too indulgent of its voters’ views on the eradication of Palestinians. Anyone who is genuinely indignant about patronage, corruption and dodgy dealings would never join the Conservative Party.

Labour’s animus is different. The party sees Tower Hamlets as its turf and resents the fact that it lost control of the council to people with whom they have no discernible ideological differences on most things, the only distinction being that Labour tend to be more relaxed about Gaza and are willing to keep their mouths shut to advance their careers. To use a football analogy, it’s a bit like the difference between Manchester City and Liverpool rather than Celtic and Rangers. Labour does have the advantage of having a much more diverse membership than Aspire and is better on LGBTQI issues and has a wider pull of talent to draw on with experience of how organisations work, but both groupings could comfortably be in the same organisation if it were not for feuds and personality clashes that are too dull to remember the details of.

That said, I did encounter Labour councillors I wouldn’t put in charge of an office tea fund and this observation about Aspire rang true: “It was the view of partners that the administration Councillors did not always understand the answers to questions, and found it more difficult to participate in any unscripted debate or engagement.”

Opening salvo in the 2026 election campaign

It is hard to argue with the report that there has been a loss of institutional memory at officer level in the council, that there is a perception of patronage and that even more than might be expected in a mayoral model of local government, everything is being driven by one man. But what Rahman has done is what people elect social democrats to do. He has insourced leisure and housing services, expanded free school meal provision and reintroduced the education maintenance allowance. By contrast, his Labour predecessor’s attitude to political leadership was “the Tories want us to cut stuff, let’s not make waves”, an attitude which has led to him getting a handsomely paid job slashing services in Birmingham.

Mayoral and council elections are due in Tower Hamlets in 2026. Aspire has its own problems due to the defections of some of its councillors but these are as nothing compared to Labour’s. Rushanara Ali’s general election vote fell from 44 052 (72.7%) to 15 896 (34.1%). A Galloway aligned independent got 14 000 votes and the Greens got 6391 votes just by plonking a name on the ballot paper.

This report is the opening salvo in that election campaign and the intensely parochial politics of Tower Hamlets will be affected by what is happening elsewhere. Trump, with Labour’s support, will probably enable the annexation of the West Bank and an intensification of the slaughter in Gaza. Labour’s tiny majority will crumble to the Greens and whatever iteration of Aspire stands candidates. At an historical moment when political insurgency against established parties with their support for cuts and war is being harnessed by the far right internationally, that is a slightly more cheering prospect than the alternative.