After their absolute car crash last time the Lib Dems adopted a former Lutfur Rahman-backed candidate, you would think they would be more careful not to select someone associated with the disgraced former Tower Hamlets Mayor in future. Apparently not, as they’ve now selected Rahman’s hand-picked successor in Tower Hamlets as an MEP candidate – Rabina Khan. She’s been on quite a journey:

• May 2010: Khan is elected as a Labour Councillor in Shadwell
• Oct 2010: Khan leaves Labour to join newly-elected mayor Lutfur Rahman’s Cabinet
• May 2014: Re-elected as Councillor for Rahman’s new Tower Hamlets First party
• April 2015: Lutfur Rahman and Tower Hamlets First found guilty of “corrupt and illegal practices”, THF is disbanded and Rahman’s election is voided although Khan and other THF Councillors keep their seats
• May 2015: Khan stands in the subsquent Mayoral by-election as Rahman’s chosen successor, losing to Labour
• Nov 2016: Khan splits from the Rahman-supporting independents to form her own party, the People’s Alliance of Tower Hamlets (PATH)
• May 2018: Khan places second in the Mayoral election again but all other PATH Councillors except her lose their seats
• Aug 2018: Khan dissolves PATH and joins the Lib Dems, along with the now disgraced former PATH councillor Abjol Miah
• April 2019: Khan selected by Lib Dems as an MEP candidate for London

Only time will tell where Khan’s long and winding political journey takes her next. However, she’ll fit right in in Brussels – an FoI request previously revealed Khan claimed a staggering £1,085 for taxi fares in just 8 months while serving in Rahman’s Cabinet, including £120 for a 1.5-mile trip. From one gravy train to another…

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…?

Earlier this week Guido reported on the Liberal Democrat candidate for a local by-election in the rotten borough of Tower Hamlets. Their candidate, Abjol Miah, had shared deeply anti-Semitic content including a video by former KKK leader David Duke. He also tweeted alleging Jews are joining ISIS, and “Zionist Jew Bill Maher“. 

After Guido’s article, the Lib Dems quietly suspended Miah as a candidate and a member of the party and have suspended their Shadwell campaign altogether. So far the Labour Party look to be sticking by their hate preacher fan candidate in the same election…

The suspension will come as news to Lib Dem MP Tom Brake, who was pictured with Miah at an election hustings just last month.

Miah has been pretty promiscuous with his party affiliations over the years – he’s stood for George Galloway’s Respect Party, crooked Lutfur Rahmen’s Tower Hamlets First and its successor the People’s Alliance of Tower Hamlets. Despite Miah campaigning for Sadiq Khan, Guido hears that the Labour Party refused to take him on as a candidate. After all that seems like the Lib Dems were the only party who were willing take him on…

UPDATE: This story originally misidentified the timing of the picture with Tom Brake as this week – it was in fact taken on the 7th January. Brake has denied knowing he was backing an anti-semitic candidate…

After Guido brought you the news that Labour’s candidate for this Thursday’s by-election in Tower Hamlets is a big fan of a banned Bin Laden hate preacher, the Lib Dems (fresh from re-admitting David “the Jews” Ward) have seemingly sought to get in on the controversy too. They have selected Abjol Miah as their candidate for the Shadwell Ward – that’s him on the right in the picture above with Vince Cable. As you can see, Abjol’s social media activity is quite something…

Miah, who campaigned for Sadiq Khan in 2016, wasn’t very active on Twitter before this year, but one thing he did choose to share was video from former Ku Klux Klan chief David Duke, which attempts to show that Jews, or as he calls them – ‘Zios’, run the world. He even refers to Obama as “Ziobama”. The long-suffering voters of Tower Hamlets must almost be missing the days of full-on electoral fraud with a choice of candidates this bad…