A group of Tower Hamlets Borough councillors, elected to serve their constituents in London, are running for Parliament in Bangladesh a report states.
Tower Hamlets, the diverse London borough which is home to one of the UK’s largest Bangladeshi diasporas and which politically is best known in modern memory for probity issues and its corruption-convicted Mayor Lutfur Rahman may lose a handful of its councillors to the Bangladesh general election in February.
A report in London local paper The Evening Standard claims to have knowledge of “several” Tower Hamlets councillors who are standing, or have declared an intention to stand for the Bangladeshi parliament. While there is no law against this in the United Kingdom, the paper notes the British government has criticised the councillors for neglecting down their constituents in London by seeking election abroad.
The report names Councillor Sabina Khan, who was elected as a Labour councillor in Mile End, Tower Hamlets in 2022 but who later defected to Bangladeshi-born Mayor Rahman’s Aspire Party at some point last year. Khan’s social media presence reveals an X account that has been essentially politics or local government-free for months, but which shows that Khan was a long time Labour activist and keen supporter of London’s Mayor Sadiq Khan.
Sabina Khan is post holder for “influential” roles at Tower Hamlet council including the Overview and Scrutiny Committee and others, posts for which she is paid, per the local Labour Party.
Tower Hamlets Labour has previously noted that Khan has been adopted as the official candidate of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) for Golapganj, an administrative division of some 330,000 people in north-east Bangladesh.
The recent reports on Khan state she has been absent at many meetings, the implication made this may be because of her Bangladeshi electoral run. This may or may not be true, but a 2019 article by Labour List names a councillor called Sabina Khan linked to the Tower Hamlets area which they describe as having been “criticised by Labour members for low attendance of council meetings”, suggesting the issue may be more long-standing.
Also named by the Standard article is Councillor Ohid Ahmed, again elected with a Labour rosette for the area of Lansbury, Poplar in Tower Hamlets in 2022. As before, Ahmed is recording as having defected to the Mayor Lutfur Rahman banner, first his Tower Hamlets First Party and then to Aspire. Ahmed is now an independent.
Ahmed is a regular on social media and in-between posts about local Tower Hamlets council business he has also shared posts on opposing tightening migration rules for the UK, about Palestine and Gaza, and has tweeted at a Bangladeshi airline to complain about difficulties in booking flights. Many of Ahmed’s posts are in the Bengali language and are about the BNP party and about Bangladeshi politics and current affairs.
A profile on Ahmed in Bangladeshi daily newspaper The New Nation states he is, like Khan, a native of the Golapganj area and that he already serves as the foreign affairs advisor to the BNP party.
A third Tower Hamlets councillor, unnamed by the paper, is also said to be preparing to run in the election next year.
The revelations of the UK-elected politicians also going for office abroad is not the first time of late that Bangladesh has been entangled in British politics. Earlier this year, Labour government anti-corruption minister Tulip Siddiq stood down from her post over graft allegations tied to her influential Bangladeshi family. Siddiq’s grandfather had been both President and Prime Minister of Bangladesh, and her aunt was its longest-serving Prime Minister until the 2024 coup.
In August, it was confirmed Siddiq would be facing corruption charges in Bangladesh. The trial began in her absence, she having refused to attend and accusing the court itself of being corrupt and not fit to judge, and the evidence against her of being fake.
These developments came as another Labour government minister was forced to step down this year, again over money woes connected to property, with Bangladeshi-born Rushanara Ali falling on her sword.
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