We were a bit slow off the mark with this one, so apologies, but at last we can now offer you some little Stop Boris promotional graphics to put into the design of your blog, journal or web site if you want to promote and link to StopBoris.org to help spread the Anti-Boris word.

To choose an image size/shape and grab its HTML code to insert in your site, just go to the Campaign blog and web site buttons section of StopBoris.org!

Sadly I’ve no time to compose a proper post, but I couldn’t leave it until late this evening to point out that the BNP have endorsed Boris as their candidate of choice for their voters’ second preferences.

I think the Tory Troll was first with this news - well spotted, that troll - and Dave Hill’s also covered it since.

I’m not aware of a response from Boris’s team yet, but I assume this wasn’t part of Lynton Crosby’s carefully orchestrated campaign. That’s the trouble with ‘dog-whistle’ tactics: you can’t control exactly which ‘dogs’ prick up their ears at them…

Even a fellow old Etonian and Oxford alumnus has turned firmly against Boris in a blog post today. But then, this is Jonathon Porritt, leading environmentalist. He’s pretty clear about what he thinks of Boris:

The prospect of Boris as Mayor of London is just so scary. Either he is a genuine, out-and-out buffoon, in which case London becomes a laughing stock alongside its Mayor, or he is a pseudo-buffoon, in which case his true ideological nastiness will soon be revealed. The prospect of Boris taking over London’s Climate Change Action Plan is even scarier. He may have learnt not to reveal his full contrarian bigotry on climate change, but he really doesn’t get it, and would rapidly scale back or completely get rid of the ambitious targets in the Action Plan. And that would be a massive set back.

The Tory Troll has been doing some excellent anti-Boris blogging. I’ve been considering adding him/her to the list of links on the left of this blog but they’re obviously coming at things from an anti-Conservative perspective and I wouldn’t want to give the impression that we are too. (Obviously plenty of anti-Boris people are anti-Tory too, but there are people who usually support the Conservatives who support our campaign to keep the buffoon out of City Hall and so their party’s reputation intact.)

Anyway, let none of my linking pondrances detract from a good post this morning, summarising and linking the issues we’ve covered on our own blog this afternoon too. Well worth a read.

Last night saw a hustings at which the leading four of the mayoral candidates addressed the big business community in London.

Dave Hill of the Guardian ‘live-blogged’ the event, giving a good overview of proceedings. One of the comments posted underneath, from (one assumes) a member of the business community in the audience, offered what we can only hope is an opinion which reflects the thoughts of plenty of other audience members!

I was actually there tonight; first time I’ve seen them all in the flesh. I thought Boris came across rather poorly in the end. His jokes got their usual laughs but he seemed agitated the whole time and [kept] interjecting when others were speaking.

Sounds like more evidence as to why Boris is avoiding any similar events in a more public sphere, like a televised debate. He just can’t handle proper, adult discussions of the real issues, without getting flustered and interrupting people rudely.

Unlike Boris, Pippa Crerar actually uses bendy buses - and rather likes them.

They seem all right to me too. I’m a bit baffled as to how they became such a totemic punchbag - the Heather Mills of the public transport world, at least during this election. But then I’m still more than a bit baffled as to how Boris ended up being the front-runner for Mayor of London. It’s a baffling world.

Over the weekend, a bit of a heated debate broke out on the Guardian’s blogging site Comment is Free between Ken Livingstone and Brian Paddick, with Siân Berry and even George Galloway also joining in.

Notable by his absence, as the linked article mentions, was Boris, who a spokesman informed the Guardian was ”out there meeting real people” - not to be confused with the pretend people who use the internet of course.

This highlights an important part of Boris’s strategy: don’t engage in meaningful discussions of policies.

A month after David Cameron called for live TV debates during elections, Boris has been refusing to participate in any sort of televised debate with his opponents in the Mayoral contest. Cameron taunted Gordon Brown at Prime Minister’s Question Time last month, asking him “What on earth are you frightened of?”, and it now seems that question would be more pressingly addressed to his own Mayoral candidate, Boris Johnson.

But then, we know the answer: Boris is frightened of the other candidates wiping the floor with him in a discussion of the issues, because unlike him, they have a grasp of them and are competent, capable politicians who can engage in debates properly, rather than reeling off soundbites and expending much of their concentration on trying not to smirk.

Boris is in the lead in the polls, and as such a debate would be his to lose - and lose it he most certainly would. A televised debate would expose his cluelessness to a viewing audience of thousands (of “real people”, no less), who would quickly switch their allegiance to someone more worthy of a vote.

I suppose it’s hard to blame Boris for being terrified by the idea of a debate. After all, if I had a manifesto as thin on policy and heavy on meaningless waffle as his, I’d want to steer clear of anything that might bring any scrutiny to bear on it.

I’ve heard much about the article in today’s Evening Standard which states that Boris is “holding secret talks with potential executives to run City Hall” if he becomes Mayor, but unfortunately the Standard’s web site appears to me to be down at the moment (long may it continue) so I can’t read it for myself.

What I can do is link to a MayorWatch article with a headline of the “Pope: ‘I am Catholic’” variety: Labour: ‘Boris isn’t up to the job’. Hardly a surprise that Labour might think that, but it sounds like this story certainly does lend itself to this interpretation.

The report claims senior Tories are concerned that a badly run capital would have an adverse impact on David Cameron’s chances of winning the next General Election.

Speaking this afternoon Tessa Jowell MP, Minister for London, said […] “David Cameron is asking Londoners to elect someone he is determined won’t be allowed to exercise power.”

Rumour has long had it that Cameron never expected that Boris would actually end up winning the Mayoralty, and now he’s the clear front-runner it’s understandable that he might be nervous about the impact on the Conservative party’s reputation. The General Election is widely expected not to be held until May 2010 now, which would give voters more than enough time to see what an atrocious buffoon the party has put forward for Mayor of London, potentially damaging the party’s credibility.

So Cameron - who, it should be acknowledged, Boris’s team have denied “is directly involved” in the discussions (presumably in the same way as Gordon Brown was never “directly involved” in those regular attempts to destabilise Tony Blair’s premiership) - has now had to enter damage limitation mode rather hastily and endeavour to find people with the skills Boris so obviously lacks, like, er, pretty much all the skills needed to run London.

Heh, I’ve just realised - does this story remind you of any particular Stop Boris poster? We hadn’t realised any of them would come quite so literally true, quite so quickly.