Luftur Rahman answering questions at a press conference after winning the Mayoral vote.     Photo Andy Goddard

Lutfur Rahman has won the Mayoral vote in the constituency of Tower Hamlets.

It took place in the Art Deco Cinema Troxy.

The ballot verification finished a solid four hours late and the count went on into the early hours of the morning.

At twenty past eleven at night, it was announced that nobody had managed a majority and so the vote was going to go to the second preference on the ballot paper.

It was a two horse race between John Biggs and the incumbent Lutfur Rahman.

At around 2:30 in the morning the second preference count finished at the Tower Hamlets Mayoral election.

The electoral officer took the stage and announced the counts one by one.

When Lutfur Rahman’s count was read, the crowd assembled for him began chanting his name over and over.

Lufturs supporters celebrating, before the count announcement

The atmosphere was crackling with energy for the next half hour as the enormous turnout of the Bangladeshi community that were present broke into celebrations in the street.

Earlier in the evening, we heard that a Labour supporter had tweeted that the difference in counts was going to be unsurmountable even if everything went John Bigg’s way in the second preference vote.

This caused quite a ruckus outside as many of those who had gathered to show their support for Lutfer, now wanted to be inside the building to show just how supportive they were.

An idea that the police weren’t particularly happy about.

The ensuing drama meant that at one point, nobody was allowed in or out of the building by police.

Police control crowds outside the Troxy                                                                                                                              Photo: Andy Goddard

A dramatic election then with an equally dramatic end.

Here is John Biggs giving his losing speech. Note how he is booed as he graced the stage.

Here is Lutfur Rahman giving his victory speech. The crowd were vocal throughout the ceremony.

After the speeches Lutfur gave a press conference that we were present for. Here is the recording we made.

After the press conference, Rahman went out into the street to meet his supporters.

The Media tried to follow him but were stopped by security guards. Leading to the immortal comment ‘The BBC are here, you’ve got to let the BBC through. Yeah Freedom of the press!’.

For those of you that are interested we have prepared a graph of the count for tonight:

Breakdown of votes cast in the Mayoral elections. Graph: Andy Goddard

And another showing the composition of the majority for Lutfer Rahman.

Graph showing the 1st and 2nd preference vote breakdown of the top two candidates.            Graph: Andy Goddard

Join John for our mayoral election roundup recorded here in the Troxy featuring some of the most important moments of the night in sound, video and photographs from our 2 reporters on the ground.