Incum
Given that 259 votes were cast in Aldgate yesterday and the turnout was 30.7%, it is evident that voters in the ward number only in three figures. It is therefore utterly absurd that they should be represented by 6 councillors – 5 common councillors and a senior councillor or alderperson. Even ignoring the fact that the overwhelming majority of these are business voters rather than residents, the ratio of councillors to electors is patently absurd. There are only slightly more than 100 electors for every councillor. Such rotten borough electoral figures cry out for democratic reform.
We’d put Umradia’s crushing defeat down in part to the unsubstantiated and utterly unlikely claims he made about his career achievements – see our last post on this election – and news of this spreading in the weeks immediately before the vote. That said, his association with Luis Tilleria probably also cost him votes among those who knew of this. Umradia was one of a handful of City councillors who foolishly agreed to take part in the Business Excellence Awards put on by Tilleria and his cronies at the Royal Automobile Club in Pall Mall on 28 May 2022. The event was described – replete with bizarre capitalisations and other errors retained here – in promotional material as:
Great networking evening, with discussions and insights of Latin-American and UK business leaders, Members of the UK Government, City of London Corporation, representatives of the Ecuadorean government, entrepreneurs and influential community leaders, Including Rehana Ameer Common Councillor, Sushil Saluja Chairman Heart of the City of London, Shailendra Umradia Member of the Planning and Transportation Commettee City of London, Arseniy Ladusan Leading Environmental Expert, Luis F. Tilleria Common Councillor of the City of London, Harry Sardinas Founder of Speakers Are Leaders, Lily Patrascu Book Publisher, Aaron D’Souza, Common Councillor of the City of London.
Tilleria raised his profile by getting ‘elected’ to the City council in March this year and while he’s used it as a networking opportunity, ultimately it seems to have had a negative impact on his political ambitions to become an Ecuadorian MP – since it led to his 2018 bankruptcy and earlier fines for being a rogue landlord becoming more widely known. In a previous post we looked at how Tilleria’s ‘chancers’ network included some of those involved in his Royal Automobile Club event. Association with Tilleria seems to undermine the credibility of City politicians and so Umradia didn’t do himself any favours by lending his name to the Business Excellence Awards.
It is worth noting that City councillor Rehana Ameer – who was also on the bill at Tilleria’s Royal Automobile Club event – is the mother of, and lives at the same address as, Umradia’s election nominee Saif Masood – as documented in our previous post on this ballot. We haven’t yet stumbled upon anything other than the Business Excellence Awards linking City councillor Aaron D’Souza to Tilleria – but we’ve yet to pursue this as an avenue of research. Among the sponsors of the Royal Automobile Club event were PW Capital, of which Tilleria is the sole director and which he continued to operate as director while an undischarged bankrupt (scroll down to notes in this post for details).
We didn’t know much about Elizabeth Lange when we published our last post on the Aldgate ballot but we’ve since discovered one of our Guildhall contacts did correctly identify her Facebook account – reproduced in our earlier aldermanic contest post – since a photo from it was used to illustrate her Speak For The City election pitch. Despite this, we’re still largely in the dark about who Lange is and why she stood for the office of Aldgate alderperson. Her career outline is extremely sketchy and doesn’t name a single firm she worked for – which led us to wonder if, like Umradia, she is over-egging her accomplishments. Below is a screen shot of that pitch.
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