This morning’s LBC debate wasn’t worth getting up early for.

There were one or two good moments, like the opportunity to remind people that not only would Boris be bumbling and incompetent in a crisis, but also in the immediate aftermath of the 7 July 2005 bombings, he wrote a piece criticising Islam and stating that the Koran was inherently violent.

This reminder sent him off into the most over-the-top display of mock outrage, accusing Ken, who’d quoted him, of "demeaning the office of Mayor" by issuing such a "smear". Once again, Boris claims that it’s a smear to simply read back what he himself did genuinely write.

But overall, this morning’s debate did little to further the Stop Boris cause. That’s not to say Boris performed brilliantly – obviously, that will never happen because he is incapable of doing so – but there were no quotable gaffes or idiotic cock-ups.

Being on the radio presumably helped, as it meant he could read from whatever notes he wanted without having to look away from the viewers’ gazes; undoubtedly what also helped was the fact that the show was hosted by Nick Ferrari, the right-wing talk radio host who was David Cameron’s first choice for Conservative Mayoral candidate, before he worked his way through several other people who rejected him and ended up scraping the bottom of the barrel by begging Boris to take on the job.

Ferrari is a militant motorist who loves taking his 4×4s around London, and has a history of falling out with Ken Livingstone. As such it was pretty hard to see how he would be unbiased, and certainly he didn’t hold back: when the subject of apologising for London’s role in slavery came up. Ken famously did this last year, and Brian Paddick agreed that this was right, he incurred instant strong scorn from Ferrari. Naturally Boris didn’t think an apology was necessary for decades of treating ethnic minorities as a secondary race – hardly a surprise given his own record in the area of race relations – and there was no disputing this from Ferrari.

So basically Boris got an easier ride here than the others, because the show’s outspoken host is just the kind of reactionary that Boris’s campaign is targeting. Indeed, it sounds like Ferrari spends much of his time on air ranting in an effort to bring his listeners around to his right-wing way of thinking about the world, so he might just have created some Boris voters over the years!

Even in a friendly environment, though, Boris still kept interrupting and talking over other people. He just can’t control his manners.

Roll on the next few televised debates, when we shall hopefully once again see the real Boris slipping out from behind the façade!

Oh good, we are at the Neasdenburg Rally all week. Here’s today’s instalment:

I’m gobsmacked by what I believe is now today’s Sunday Telegraph front page article, Boris Johnson: I’m the victim of dirty tricks in London Mayor race.

The amount of cheek present in anyone whose campaign is being run by Lynton Crosby accusing anyone else of dirty tricks is staggering.

The Telegraph even states as a matter of fact (without offering any evidence) that Boris’s opponents have used "push polling", which is a well known favourite technique of Mr. Crosby himself.

Boris also accuses his opponents of "sub-radar stuff", despite it being well documented that Crosby’s own strategy for Boris is specifically known as an "under-the-radar" campaign.

He continues:

They’ve read every column I’ve ever written to see if they can find something to turn into a smear about a position I don’t hold.

It’s extraordinary that Boris would suggest that simply by highlighting things that he himself has written, we opponents of his (I assume StopBoris.org counts as an opponent, even though we don’t have our own Mayoral candidate) are somehow misrepresenting him. If we mention that he thinks gay marriage is in some way comparable to a union between "three men and a dog", or that he spent column after column repeatedly attacking the Stephen Lawrence inquiry as unnecessary and "Orwellian", it’s unbelievable that his response is to say we are smearing him, and that he doesn’t hold positions that he himself has written that he does hold.

This is the man who was happy to employ and publish outrageous articles by out-and-out racist Taki; the man who’s taken six years to appreciate that "piccaninnies" might be an offensive word to ethnic minorities; the man who supported George W. Bush’s election and re-election; the man who strongly opposed the repealing of Section 28 because he thought it would lead to enforced "homosexual instruction" in the classroom; the man who promised to help an old fraudster friend track down and beat up a journalist; the man who is in the tiny minority of politicians in the developed world who still opposes the Kyoto protocol to tackle climate change (Bush being the only remaining developed world leader not to sign up to it); the man who opposed the National Minimum Wage; the man who claims he did or didn’t snort cocaine based on who’s listening at the time, and did or didn’t have an affair based on what evidence has so far emerged.

With so much evidence that Boris is an untrustworthy charlatan at odds with the vast majority of Londoners’ views, why would anyone need to make anything up to ’smear’ him?

And meanwhile, a single recent appearance of the Back Boris team involved them issuing outright lies on crime and likening Ken Livingstone to mass-murdering dictator Robert Mugabe. Do these things not count as ‘dirty tricks’?

The Sunday Telegraph’s front page article represents a desperate escalation of tactics by Lynton Crosby, attempting to deflect attention away from his own campaigns lies, smears and deceptions by screaming blue murder about vastly exaggerated ‘dirty tricks’ being used against him.

As Boris-stoppers we must do all we can to help our fellow Londoners cut through this thick layer of meta-lies, and see Boris’s campaign for the cynical charade it really is, yet again trying to keep the spotlight off Boris by pushing it back towards his opponents, and raising the dishonesty and bluster levels higher than ever.

At long last, we’ve published a poster highlighting Boris’s homophobia.

The ‘Gay Shame’ poster includes a quote from Boris stating that gay marriage is comparable to a union between “three men and a dog”, and a reminder of his strong support for the anti-gay Section 28: he said its repealing would “allow left-wing local authorities to waste taxpayers’ money on idiotic and irrelevant homosexual instruction”.

A miniature version of the poster has also been added to the Stop Boris application on Facebook, so you can add this to your profile to help spread the message about Boris’s appalling record of pandering to homophobia via your Profile page and Mini-Feed.

According to a quick item on the BBC News 24 newspaper preview just now, tomorrow’s (well, today’s now) Telegraph has a lengthy profile of Boris which doesn’t sound like it’s the glowing praise-athon you might expect from his former employer.

It’s not online yet, but what I could glean from the television was that part of its headline was “Running for Mayor… and running from the Press?”, which is a nice gaffophobia reference, illustrated by a photo of a journalist (the author of the piece?) trying to grab him as he walks away.

Apparently the piece also focusses on some of his gaffes and some of the racist articles published in the Spectator when he was editor of it – which he issued another apology for this week, having previously only apologised for the things he’d written himself, rather than the out-and-out racism from the pen of Taki, which he waved through to the newsstand countless times during his editorship.

I don’t suppose even a StopBoris.org-worthy hatchet job would change some Telegraph readers’ minds about the columnist they lapped up for two decades until last year – and however surprisingly negative this article might be, it’s probably not that harsh – but you never know, it might just make some of their readers think twice about backing him.

We look forward to seeing the article when it appears online.

Update: It appeared while I was writing that! I’m a bit confused because although I think this must be the article they were referring to, I can’t see any references to the Spectator racism in it. Indeed, it’s one of the milder articles I’ve read - exactly as one would expect from his former employer.

It’s not without its revelations, though. Did you wonder what the underlying motivation for Boris to become Mayor was? What incident had propelled him to do all he could to get into City Hall? Was it his passion for the city’s diverse population? Perhaps his desire to dream up exciting policy plans to improve the city? Or some overarching vision for the greatest capital on Earth? Er, no. It all dates back to one brief encounter on his bike:

I was almost killed by a bendy bus and can remember pulling over, shaking, to the kerb and thinking, ‘Who did this? It must have been Livingstone, it must have been that man.’ And I remember thinking I would do anything I could to secure his removal from office.

Knowing that that was the real motivator explains rather a lot about his ridiculous campaign, actually.

A couple of good e-mails have come in from readers this evening - thanks!

First up, someone chasing us up on the homophobia-highlighting poster I said we’d have to sort out some time ago. I think that might just have to be put onto this weekend’s to-do list.

The same person wants to see the web site and blog getting more promotion on other blogs and web sites. So do we, so if you run anything you can put a link to us on, please do!

In the second e-mail, journalist David Wearing points out an article about Boris he wrote last July, when his potential candidacy was first announced, and the general consensus was that he was nothing to worry about; David’s article clearly shows he was a rare dissenting voice.

(Without wanting to blow our own trumpet too much, July last year is actually also when the Stop Boris campaign kicked off too, over on Facebook - great minds think alike! Oh, and in collecting the Facebook link I discovered that the group there has passed the 1,000-member mark today - it’s really shot up in the past couple of days, from about 860 mid-week.)

Anyway, David’s article is an excellent analysis of so many of the underlying reasons why Boris shouldn’t be Mayor of London. It would be impossible to edit it down into a few select quotes so instead I shall link to the whole article, The Liberties of Boris Johnson, but spoil it slightly by cutting straight to his concluding remarks:

In 2008, London may find itself, as a city comprising hundreds of ethnic groups and nationalities, run by a Mayor who displays, at best, an unthinking attitude to race relations. It may find itself, as a city which will both effect and suffer from the effects of climate change to a serious extent, run by a Mayor who fails to grasp environmental issues at even the most basic level. It may find itself, as a city of over 7 million people, run by a Mayor whose stunted view of politics contains little room for the legitimate rights and needs of others. At that point, Johnson the Libertarian, Johnson the character, may, for some at least, lose a good deal of his entertainment value.

Got anything to point out to us? Campaign ideas? Events you think we should try to be at? Get in touch!

The Guardian followed up on the Tory Troll’s scoop earlier: Give second vote to Johnson, BNP tells supporters.

It seems Team Boris did manage a rebuttal in the end, but Brian Paddick’s opening sentence was the best:

Clearly the BNP have recognised Boris’s talent for causing offence and creating division.

The Guardian article then strays on to the astonishingly offensive remarks of the BNP candidate for the London Assembly who was sacked this week when someone unearthed an old piece of writing he’d done on a blog, stating that rape was no worse a crime than “force-feeding a woman chocolate cake”, among other things.

The interesting thing about this is the BNP’s comments about this sacking, which sound remarkably similar to the defences Boris wheels out when someone raises his own offensive writings, be they on homosexuality, race or whatever. The BNP said:

It was felt that no matter how much Nick Eriksen’s blog comments, written back in 2005, had been distorted and taken out of the context of a blog which reflected our tough stance on all sorts of crime, they could still be perceived as trivialising the issue in a manner that many women in particular could have found extremely offensive.

Written some time ago, taken out of context, could have been found offensive… all the words of an insincere apology, and all just the kind of words to be found in most of Boris’s apologies (and there have been many). No wonder the BNP have warmed to him.

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…

There comes a point at which additional commentary on this blog is pretty unnecessary, and trying to think of a title for yet another post showing how hopeless Mayor Boris would be is just more effort than it’s worth. Johann Hari’s encounter with Boris, described in today’s Independent, speaks for itself.

when we get onto the issues, I get worried. I ask him why he supported Section 28, the notorious legislation that banned teachers from “promoting” homosexuality – and it quickly becomes clear he doesn’t actually know what it was. “As I recall the issue was to do with compulsion. Wasn’t the question [about] whether or not schools should be compelled to have [these lessons]? I thought the issue was: are you compelling teachers in schools to take a particular line? I’m not in favour of that… There’s far too much proscription already of what teachers have to say and do. I’m against bossiness”

But Boris, I explain – Section 28 was the act of bossiness and proscription. It was a flat-out ban, telling teachers not to talk about gays. He goes into his ‘oh cripes’ routine, as if it is charming that he supported a piece of legislation he had totally misunderstood.

On all the questions, he seems to go into a sort of panicked free association, where he desperately to find a link to something he does know about. When I ask him what he would do to reduce the sky-high rate of suicide among gay teenagers, he starts talking about the need to get kids out of gangs – as if the Brick Lane Massiv is stocked with gay-boys and lesbians. He admits he isn’t sure what you call the unions between gay people – they’re civil partnerships, Boris.

If that’s the best he can do when trying to court the gay vote - Hari’s interview was primarily intended for consumption by Attitude readers - I don’t think he’ll be getting very far.

I’d forgotten about Boris’s rampant homophobia, which has seen him write such gems as:

If gay marriage was OK - and I was uncertain on the issue - then I saw no reason in principle why a union should not be consecrated between three men, as well as two men; or indeed three men and a dog.
Boris Johnson, ‘Friends, Voters, Countrymen’, HarperCollins, 2002

Not to mention writing in the Spectator when the government were repealing Section 28 (the legislation forbidding the ‘promotion’ of homosexuality in schools) that they had an “appalling agenda, encouraging the teaching of homosexuality in schools”. This was swiftly followed in the Telegraph with this:

It is more sensitive to spare parents’ anxieties than to allow left-wing local authorities to waste taxpayers’ money on idiotic and irrelevant homosexual instruction.

One of the greatest things about London is how anyone can come to this city and be whatever they want to be, act however they want to act, and as long as their behaviour doesn’t have a negative impact on others, nobody minds what they do. And certainly the gay scene in London is one of the most thriving and vibrant in the country, if not the world. The annual Pride march is a highlight in the capital’s calendar. It seems Boris would rather the march was called Shame.

I think I may have to come up with another poster to cover this issue…