Just seen a great report on Channel 4 News (I assume the video will be added to that rather thin page at some point). The Daily Mirror filmed David Cameron cycling through red traffic lights and performing various other misdemeanours.

Quite amusing (not to mention annoying for those of us who obey the rules when we cycle but are given a bad name by the minority who don’t!), but Boris got himself a bit tangled up when Channel 4’s reporter caught up with him at Borough Market.

He said there should be zero tolerance for cyclists breaking the road traffic regulations, slipping into one of his plethora of pre-prepared bland lines (which seem to be his main tactic against the risk of coming out with a blunder - well, that and the fact that he’s been ordered to stay off the drink for a couple of months).

For once (good old Channel 4 News), the reporter actually followed up on what he’d just said, asking what his zero tolerance approach meant he thought about his party leader’s misbehaviour. For the first time in a while (thanks to a combination of the aforementioned tactics and hitherto woeful journalistic scrutiny), Boris was visibly flustered, and paused for a moment, before coming out with the hopeless riposte: “Show me the evidence!”

The report immediately cut to the Mirror’s footage again.

I do hope Channel 4 News does a lot more coverage of the Mayoral election in the coming weeks.

Last night’s edition of This Week has an interesting little discussion starting 26-and-a-half minutes in. Prominent former Conservative minister Michael Portillo, regular guest pundit alongside Diane Abbott, struggles to reply to questions about whether Boris is now a serious politician, or just a joke - indeed, he is completely lost for words for some time!

Eventually he goes as far as to state that, prior to a clip they’d just shown of Boris moaning about crime, Portillo hadn’t seen Boris talking about any serious areas of policy at all - and that even in the clip he wasn’t actually putting forward any proposals to indicate how he would actually deal with the problems he was describing.

Portillo is speaking here as someone who’s obviously a Conservative through and through, but has stepped down from party political activity so is freer to speak his mind than most Conservatives. How many other Conservatives are sitting on similar views, keeping them to themselves?

As Portillo also pointed out, if Boris wins this election, he will become the most powerful Tory in the country for over a decade. “He will be in power over 7 million Londoners while Cameron is still just talking about power - which would be quite an extraordinary situation!”

Extraordinary indeed - can fellow Conservatives really afford for Boris to be their figurehead?

On a related note, this week’s Guardian Politics Podcast has some discussion about the Mayoral election contest (about 14-and-a-half minutes in), and it’s well worth a listen. The related point is made by their correspondent Allegra Stratton, who’s seen Boris in action on the campaign trail.

I’m not saying I think it’s a good thing, but I think he possibly can [stay more serious/bury his buffoonishness] for the election campaign; I think over the period of a year, to a year and a half, to two years, that would see us go from the London Mayoral election to the probable general election, I think that there is a question mark over whether Boris wouldn’t become the biggest problem for the national Conservatives.

If I were a Conservative supporter, I’d want to keep Boris as far away from City Hall as possible, so as not to damage Cameron’s chances in couple of years’ time. And, of course, I’d start by downloading the Conservatives against Boris poster…