The fall of Lutfur Rahman shows the power of brave campaigning journalism

So farewell then Lutfur Rahman. On Thursday the Islamist-aligned Mayor of Tower Hamlets was found guilty of electoral fraud. The poll in which he was ‘elected’ has been declared void and he has now been barred from office. There is much to be said about this and the implications for British democracy as a whole of what went on in Tower Hamlets.

But this is also a time when certain people should be given a huge amount of credit. The lawyers and the four local residents who brought the case obviously deserve admiration for their tenacity and their principled stand against corruption in public life. But it is also worth mentioning two journalists.

After all, the profession has gone through a bad time of late. There has been the hacking scandals, falling circulation, license fee wars and goodness knows how many other endless battles which must make some of the reading and viewing public wonder if there is any such thing as an honest journalist. And the answer is that there are – and two of them have been highlighted by this case.

Andrew Gilligan at the Telegraph has been on to Lutfur Rahman for years. His 2010 Dispatches documentary on Rahman’s associations with the extremist Islamic Forum Europe was just a part of it. Week in and week out since then Gilligan has worked to expose the anti-democratic activities in Tower Hamlets and his work has been an amazing demonstration of hard work, attention to detail and extraordinary persistence.

The other person who deserves credit is the BBC’s John Ware. The BBC gets a lot of flak these days as well, but John Ware is the sort of reporter that enemies of the license fee should think on. At Panorama, among other places, Ware exposed the corruption going on in Tower Hamlets when central government was wholly missing in action.