Sabrina Ruffles looks at both sides of the Young Mayor Scheme in Tower Hamlets.
The scheme to elect next year’s Young Mayor of Tower Hamlets is now closed to new applicants. For those who applied in time, training in campaigning will be provided in January, with the Young Mayoral election due to be staged soon afterwards.
The bi-annual scheme is designed to show that the young people of the borough are not all hoodies hanging on street corners, waiting for the next crime to come along.
While recorded crime in the borough dropped by 6.2 per cent in the 12 months until August 2014, applications for the Young Mayor scheme have gone up, year on year. Both trends point in the same direction – away from the clichéd image of ‘youth crime’.
However, re-branding the borough’s young people as Young Mayor material may be as far removed from reality as the ‘youth crime’ stereotype.
Elected in early 2013, Young Mayor Mahdi Alam was widely criticised after posting violent tweets. The present incumbent has not responded to emails and his Facebook page is inactive. The office of Young Mayor appears to have fallen into disuse.
This is a minor issue compared to the controversy surrounding Lutfur Rahman, the (senior) Mayor of Tower Hamlets. But it shows it’ll take more than a publicity campaign and a toy election to re-invigorate local democracy among the young.