The corrupt socialist mayor of Tower Hamlets is now paid £92,000-a-year after giving himself a 13 per cent pay rise, while councillors also increased their pay by £178,000 just weeks after local elections.

Special responsibility allowances for members will rise by between 10 per cent and 130 per cent under Tower Hamlets Council's plans.

The council, which has been under the control of the controversial Aspire party since 2022, will also create two new paid roles.

Aspire argued these steep pay rises are necessary because members' salaries had not been increased for four years and would otherwise remain lower than those in some neighbouring boroughs.

Mayor Lutfur Rahman - who was previously banned from holding public office for five years for bribery, intimidation, casting invalid votes and false statements - will see his salary rise 13 per cent, from £81,579 to £92,000-a-year.

The basic allowance for all councillors will increase by £894 (8 per cent) to £12,792. 

Meanwhile, cabinet members will see pay increases of £14,640 (43 per cent), bringing their allowances to £48,292, including their basic pay.

Deputy Mayors' pay will increase by 25 per cent, from £45,423 to £56,874.

An Ambassador and a Deputy Cabinet Member will be introduced as two new paid posts and will be created at a cost of £6,000 and £8,000 each, respectively.

Committee chairs will also see an increase in allowances, with the lead of the Licensing Committee set for an £8,374 hike (130 per cent), while the Strategic Development chair's pay will rise by £8,381 (70 per cent). 

These significant pay hikes may come as a shock to residents, given Tower Hamlets is one of London's most deprived boroughs.

It has the highest rate of child poverty in Britain, at up to 43 per cent, and is amongst the worst for income deprivation in the UK. 

Last week at the full council meeting, Labour councillor David Edgar said: 'There has been no increase for four years, and so there clearly is a need to do something, but I think that the scale of the increase is really quite surprising.

'I think that we need an increase, but I believe that people across the borough, when they look at the scale of this increase, the number of these increases, they will not welcome them, and that will be particularly true for those people who are suffering financially.'

A Tower Hamlets spokesman said: 'In 2022, councillors decided to freeze Members' allowances, the mayor's allowance and allowances for other positions such as Leader of the Opposition, Cabinet Members, and Committee Chairs.

'Consequently, these allowances in Tower Hamlets are lower than similar local authorities.

'For example, the Tower Hamlets Mayor's allowance is less than the Mayoral allowances in Hackney and Newham, and below the level recommended by the Independent Remuneration Panel.

'At the Annual General Meeting, councillors voted to adjust allowances after this four-year freeze to bring them in line with similar authorities such as Hackney, Newham and Lewisham. These adjusted allowances are still lower than most similar authorities and in most cases below the level recommended by the Independent Remuneration Panel.' 

The local elections earlier this month saw Aspire - which describes its ideology as a form of democratic socialism - retain its control of Tower Hamlets, gaining nine extra councillors which brought their total to 33.

Party leader Mr Rahman was re-elected as mayor, with almost 39 per cent of the vote, despite his sketchy past.

In 2015, Mr Rahman, who was mayor at the time and leading the Tower Hamlets First party, was suspended with the Government stepping in to manage key departments, after a report accused him of leading an administration that was 'at best dysfunctional' and 'at worst riddled with cronyism and corruption'.

A High Court judge ruled that Mr Rahman had secured his May 2014 election with the help of bribery, intimidation, the casting of invalid votes and false statements about his rival mayoral candidate. Mr Rahman has always denied the allegations.

Tower Hamlets First was removed from the list of political parties and Mr Rahman was banned from holding public office for five years.

In 2022, he returned as the head of his newly founded Aspire Party and was re-elected as mayor - a position he has held since.

Aspire cabinet member Kabir Ahmed said 'clearly there is a big difference between what the allowances here in Tower Hamlets are and what the allowances are in other boroughs', adding that the increases were recommended by an independent remunerations panel.

He emphasised the 'level of work put in by members in terms of committee meetings, various quasi-judicial bodies, as well as outside bodies'.

Mr Ahmed said the independent remunerations panel 'clearly identified' that the council are 'lagging far behind' and suggested higher pay will 'encourage a more diverse background of candidates coming forward'.

Just five of Aspire's 33 councillors are women, and the party has previously been criticised for allegedly only fielding candidates of Bangladeshi heritage.

The party ignited fury recently when it was revealed one of their candidates was elected as a member of Tower Hamlets Council despite being under suspension for anti-Semitism.

Aspire were forced to suspend Abul Monsur, a candidate for the Lansbury ward, just days before the May 7 local elections over posts on his public Facebook profile in 2025 which included Holocaust denial and an apparent approval of Adolf Hitler.

On May 30, 2025, Monsur posted an image of a 'Zionist victim card' in which the word 'Holocaust' was crossed out and replaced with 'Holohoax'.

A post on May 1, 2025, said 'there is NO mention of a "Holocaust" in papers written after WW2 by Churchill, Eisenhower, and De Gaulle'. It also made claims about 'Jews gaining control of the media'.

In a post on September 23, 2025, Monsur wrote: 'ADOLF HITLER OUTLAWED USURY (INTEREST – MAKING MONEY WITH MONEY)'- followed by three bullseye emojis.

Along with other anti-Semitic posts, he also shared a number of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, such as 'Zionists' being responsible for the Bondi Beach massacre and the assassinations of right wing American political commentator Charlie Kirk and former US president John F Kennedy.

After his suspension, Monsur told the LDRS he was 'deeply sorry for these social media posts and ashamed of them'.

He said: 'I apologise from the bottom of my heart to Jewish people in our community and in wider society.

'These social media posts were unacceptable and I have a lot of learning to do and I will undertake training and education.

'I was not thinking straight and did not understand a lot of what I posted.'

An Aspire Party spokesperson said at the time: 'The party had no idea about these appalling and unacceptable posts and once informed, took immediate action.

'Abul Monsur has apologised for not disclosing this to the Party when he was asked about social media accounts during candidate vetting, and we apologise and are extremely regretful that this was not found in due diligence checks.

They added: 'We are reviewing how we can improve social media checks to make them as thorough as possible to ensure this mistake can never happen again.'