Guido readers will have been following the collective calamities of the Labour and Lib Dem campaigns in the Shadwell by-election in Tower Hamlets, with Labour selecting a fan of a banned pro-bin Laden hate preacher while the Lib Dems were forced to ditch their candidate altogether just a day before the vote after Guido revealed some of the deeply anti-Semitic content he had posted online. Tom Brake is wishing he’d done his research before turning out to support him last month…

Both candidates still went on to fight yesterday’s by-election, with Labour’s Asik Rahman ultimately losing by 98 votes to the candidate for the new ‘Aspire’ Party, Mohammed Harun Miah. It won’t surprise anyone to learn who is behind Aspire – none other than rotten former Tower Hamlets Mayor Lutfur Rahman. Rahman is gearing up for another mayoral run in 2022 after his personal ban for a litany of electoral offences expires in 2021…

Rahman had previously given his personal endorsement to the Lib Dems’ disgraced ex-candidate Abjol Miah back in 2012, while the local Lib Dem campaign this time round was heavily targeted against Labour, helping Rahman’s new man Mohammad Harun Miah sneak in and giving the country’s most corrupt local politician his first electoral foothold back in Tower Hamlets. A Miah coincidence…?