A deep dive into the facts surrounding the row in Tower Hamlets over the audit report. Did the BBC get its facts correct? Or more troubling, is it complicit in using Islamophobia as a stick to beat a Muslim Mayor who opposes Labour in East London?
BBC Report on an audit of Tower Hamlets Council: A replay of Panorama 2014?
The historian Arnold Toynbee was among the first to articulate a systematic, cyclical view of history in the modern era. He developed this perspective while examining global civilisations, ultimately presenting his ideas in his magnum opus, A Study of History. Toynbee openly acknowledged that he drew inspiration from the earlier Muslim historian Ibn Khaldun and his Muqaddimah.
Fast-forward to the East End of London, where it seems we, too, are caught in our own accelerated historical loop, with the key protagonists being the Muslim Mayor, Lutfur Rahman, and his long-standing adversary, the Tower Hamlets Labour Party.
During my tenure as a councillor, a Labour Party official once reflected on the impact of the BBC’s controversial Panorama documentary. He believed it ultimately helped Lutfur Rahman secure victory by producing the opposite of its intended effect. The programme galvanised many local Muslims who saw it as a racist attack by a national broadcaster, an affirmation, in Ibn Khaldun’s terms, of the power of asabiyyah, or group solidarity.
Now, in 2025, it appears that BBC journalist Nick Clark’s recent article may be producing a similar response. I respect Nick as a journalist, but here is where his story falls short.
Whose fault is it anyway, Labour’s Siraj or Mayor Lutfur?
During my tenure as a councillor from 2018 to 2022, I kept a close watch on Tower Hamlets’ council housing management services. On 31 July 2019, I joined four fellow councillors in signing a call-in that proposed bringing Tower Hamlets Homes (THH), the council’s own housing stock, back in-house. Councillor Gabriela Salva and I delivered the oral arguments, successfully persuading the Scrutiny Committee to vote in our favour.
However, Mayor John Biggs later overturned this decision and chose not to reintegrate the service into the Council. This led me to ask council officials, off the record, why this had happened. The response I received was that all was not well within the organisation; bringing THH in-house risked exposing long-running issues. I followed up with a day-long visit to the management offices and further discussions, which only reinforced what I had been told.
This background and its implications are missing from Nick Clark’s BBC report, which focuses on current issues without acknowledging that many stem from the previous administration. The Council’s own Statement of Accounts shows that Tower Hamlets’ internal audit team assessed THH. In 2020/21, the internal audit gave limited assurance over THH’s risk-management systems. In the 2021/22 draft accounts, the Head of Internal Audit upgraded this to reasonable assurance for THH’s governance, risk management, and internal controls.
Between 2018 and 2022, the current Labour mayoral candidate, Siraj Islam, held responsibility for housing management. He also served as Deputy Mayor during this time. Under his oversight, the external auditor Deloitte issued qualified Value-for-Money (VFM) opinions for 2018/19 and 2019/20. For 2020/21, 2021/22, and 2022/23, the accounts were published but not signed off.
So why the double standards? Why does the BBC scrutinise the current Muslim Mayor, Lutfur Rahman, while overlooking the record of his predecessor, John Biggs?
Challenging the BBC on Islamophobia: The story so far on double standards
In June 2025, BBC News executives met members of the Muslim community in Parliament at a meeting organised by the Centre for Media Monitoring. They gathered to discuss a report highlighting bias against Muslims in the BBC’s coverage, particularly relating to what the ICC and UN officials have described as a plausible genocide in Gaza. BBC representatives accepted many of the report’s findings and verbally agreed to implement its recommendations.
It seems, however, that this message has not reached every corner of BBC News. Recent coverage has read uncomfortably as Labour Party press releases, complete with a token Bangladeshi quote added for effect, as if to say, “I’m not biased; here’s a Bangladeshi who agrees with me.” It appears this pattern may continue for some time.
The trouble with dog whistles is that both sides hear them: the intended audience, the so-called “white angry voter”, and the unintended targets, in this case, Bangladeshi Muslims. As with the Panorama episode in 2014, the result may again be the opposite of what was intended, galvanising Bangladeshis, Muslims, and right-minded progressives in support of Mayor Lutfur Rahman.
During my time as a councillor, I recall speaking with a police officer who had just returned from a school visit. In a tone of frustration, he told me that none of the children he met watched the BBC in Tower Hamlets; they and their families relied instead on Al Jazeera for news. I nodded and smiled, but inwardly my reaction was simply: so what?
Given the BBC’s past coverage and its more recent role in what many perceive as a politically motivated attack on their identities, who can blame them?
Recent Comments