Unfortunately, as chronicled by The Tory Troll, who was there, the Sky News debate was very disappointing.

It was truly bizarre how they would take some perfectly good questions, and then go to a break and never really address them. They also took a question about crime from – unless a Boris-stopper’s eyes deceive him – the very member of Team Boris who was peddling lies about crime outside the Time Out hustings earlier this month!

It was also seriously frustrating how they kept cutting things off every time the candidates starting interacting and coming alive. I lost count of the number of times Boris would come out with some rubbish and the other candidates would then be cut off without being given a chance to show it up as the nonsense it was. As I said, it was very disappointing.

Fortunately, the LBC radio discussion afterwards, featuring Dave Hill, wasn’t.

Grab it as an MP3 (I’ve even chopped out the ads) and put it on your MP3 player to pass 50 minutes of your commute. I don’t want to oversell it but I did find it a good listen on the bus this afternoon.

I was particularly cheered by a caller (I think he was the only caller they had on actually!) saying that he’d been determined he wouldn’t be voting for Ken at the start, and was a Conservative, but can’t believe how rubbish Boris has been in all the debates so will now be voting to stop him. That’s my kind of caller. (He pops up just before 28 minutes into the file, if you’re keen to hear him.)

So, the debates are over, and indeed as I type this we are now into the last day before the election itself. This is it.

Sky News are really going to town for what will be the final televised debate of the campaign, just three days before the polls come to a close:

Decision Time: The London Debate will see Ken Livingstone, Boris Johnson and Brian Paddick slug it out live from 8pm just three days before polling.

Sky’s political editor Adam Boulton will chair the debate, and more than 500 people will be at Cadogan Hall in central London to watch the action first-hand.

Coverage begins at 7.30pm with Decision Time: The London Debate Unplugged.

Sky’s Martin Stanford and a panel of experts will let you know what to look out for and size up the campaign so far.

Unplugged will continue on Sky News Active and online during the TV ad breaks and for an hour after the end of the debate at 9pm.

The panel will include a range of political bloggers, sadly not including me. I mean, I’d've worn a disguise and asked for my voice to be digitally altered, so perhaps their budget wouldn’t have stretched to it, but really, you’d think they’d've asked, wouldn’t you?

Unfortunately some personal and family commitments may well mean I won’t get to watch this until late Tuesday evening, which is rather frustrating, particularly as I’m not sure how easily I could record the ‘Active’ stuff. Hopefully Dave Hill and the Tory Troll will be able to sort you out with some coverage of the debate in the mean time.

There’s a general consensus on a large number of blogs that last night’s Question Time debate was a huge let-down. As Dave Hill says:

I was disappointed. Several policy areas fundamental to the mayoralty - housing, transport and the environment - went completely unexamined. I sincerely believe we’ve gone over the Al-Qaradawi and "watermelon smiles" territory quite often enough and there were too many questions on the emotive subjects of crime, race and immigration. Perhaps the QT team was worried about being too London-centric, but I thought the emphasis was wrong.

As someone looking forward to seeing Boris’s policies exposed as the hollow shams they are on live national TV, I can only agree! There was minimal focus on policy detail, which is what matters in the end.

Liberal Conspiracy have another take on the show:

The BBC1 Question Time special last night, featuring “the three main London mayoral candidates”, was as depressing a tit-for-tat charade as I’ve seen for some time. The ratio of insult to fact or argument was far, far too high.

Their blogger is particularly disappointed by Brian Paddick, but that doesn’t change our tactical voting advice! He does come on to Boris at the end though:

As for Boris Johnson, well it’s hardly any news that he is a complete buffoon, but his performance was shockingly bad. Tory or not, how anyone can consider backing him (other than as a childish prank or a cipher for the return of county squire politics) is astonishing. The final questioner of the evening noted that he couldn’t even figure out how to answer a question without getting into a mental scramble. But he fluffed that one, too.

As do some of the commenters:

there are no positive reasons for Boris to get the job, while Ken’s record has plenty. It’s quite the oddest election campaign I’ve ever seen, since it seems to be run solely in order for a newspaper editor to revenge herself on an elected politician who pissed her off, without any thought that there’s actually a large city to be run at the end of it.

So what did we here at Stop Boris make of the programme?

To be honest I think Question Time was such a big let-down that it’s barely worth me writing about it, particularly when the above quotes are all spot on, so I’ll keep my additional thoughts brief.

This was the umpteenth televised mayoral debate and Boris still hasn’t got the hang of taking turns to speak, since he’s so self-absorbed and self-centred that he has no concept of other people’s right to be heard. Brian Paddick got huge applause when he told him to "shut up and let somebody else speak for once!" (quoted from memory), and I’ve seen mixed reactions to this outburst online but he’s had to put up with seeing Boris in even more debates than I have, and frankly I don’t blame him at all for finally snapping!

What Boris has got better at with practice is sticking to his cynical brief, but that means he still doesn’t properly answer questions or tell anyone any details about his policies. His cynical brief is to spout brief, hollow, scripted lines about issues (primarily crime), then turn around whatever has been asked of him into an opportunity to attack the incumbent Mayor, Ken Livingstone.

And so it was that last night we saw him turning everything into an attack on Ken as quickly as possible, and heard almost no information about Boris’s own plans. It was particularly noticeable in the final, ‘off-the-wall’ question: which type of food would each candidate say best represented his leadership style? There is no way on earth that any normal person would turn this into an attack on someone else, but somehow Boris attempted to do so, having barely touched on an answer about himself, to cries of derision from most people in the studio.

In the end, under significant pressure to answer the question for once, he mumbled some nonsense about Tesco Value cornflakes, which certainly sounds about right: they’re all right if you’re primarily concerned with cutting expenditure (as Boris is on instigating big police cutbacks, for instance), but the results aren’t quite as good as ‘proper’ cornflakes (hence his complete lack of targets on crime reduction) and you can’t help feeling you’ve bought into a pale imitation of the real thing (for ‘the real thing’ read ‘a competent politician’). Perhaps he was on to something there with his one unscripted answer of the evening, after all.

Eight-and-a-half hours until tonight’s Question Time special, with Boris, Ken and Brian up against each other. It will almost certainly be the most widely watched debate yet, so we’ll all be on the edges of our seats with longing for Boris to make a monumental gaffe – or at least just to repeat the rudeness, lack of policy grasp and outright lies that have characterised most of his previous TV debating appearances!

To some extent, I agree with Dave Hill’s coverage of Tuesday night’s debate, which did indeed take place in a bit of a "bear pit atmosphere".

I think a lot of the criticism for the ineffectiveness of the debate has to be levelled at the completely unbriefed host, though. In BBC debates, the host has tended to know what the truth is of things like the bendy bus costing fiasco and what Boris has really written and signed off as editor in the past, but Alastair Stewart – who I’ve little time for anyway since he usually comes across as some sort of Daily Mail columnist reject – never seemed to know what the reality of the situation was when contentious allegations were flying about.

One error in Dave’s account is that the audience member who questioned Boris about his publication in the Spectator of comments about blacks having lower IQs did not say Boris wrote them himself, only that he had recently apologised for them, which is at least as true as anything else published in the Evening Standard.

Boris’s reaction to this being mentioned by the audience member was shocking. He went into full-on indignation mode, looking apoplectic and saying the audience member was making it up, then veering towards personally insulting by spitting out, as if discovering vermin in his kitchen or dog excrement under his shoe, "I don’t know how you came to be in this studio"!

Other points of note include the fact that he has no firm targets on crime reduction at all. When pressed on this the best he could do was to suggest that he wanted to see muggings "substantially reduced" and that he would "like to see a 100% reduction in crime on the buses"! I’d like to see world peace: perhaps I should stand for Mayor and put that in my manifesto too.

Pressed further about why he wouldn’t state a target on crime, he came out with:

There is absolutely no point in having a target unless you’re going to give the police the means and resources to do it.

Just think about the logic of that statement for a moment. The only way that can possibly work as a justification for Boris not having any crime reduction targets is if he has no intention "to give the police the means and resources to [achieve] it"! I mean, we all know he’s said on numerous occasions that he wants to find ‘real savings’, i.e. cuts, in the police budget, but this is an exceptional admission which shows he is the weakest candidate of all on crime, despite his much-trumpeted claims about it being his key focus.

He also pledged to sell off some council houses, by the way. That’s always worked well as a way to solve housing crises… Oh, wait, I mean as a way to initiate housing crises. Silly me.

And of course good old Rude, Interrupting Boris was present throughout the show, shouting over others and never shutting up when asked to. At one point the host had to point out to him that he was chairing the debate. Although, to be fair, it wasn’t always easy to tell.

The highlights of the debate are on YouTube, with a guide to skipping through the file to find the bits you want in the ‘video info’ bit on the right.

Ah, gaffophobia, how we’ve missed you. What was for a brief time our own home-grown Googlewhack seemed to have been swept somewhat under the carpet in a piece of meta-calculation by Boris’s minders, reasoning that once it had reached a full-page article on page 3 of a national newspaper, his non-appearance had started to become the negative story they were trying to avoid by keeping him away from things in the first place!

So soon enough they started putting him forward for TV debates and hustings and all the things he’d previously been pulling out of. Indeed there have been so many TV appearances it’s been hard to keep up with them all! (There’s another in 25 minutes on ITV1 London, by the way.)

But this weekend Boris’s minders were reminded why they’d been pulling him out of things in the first place. At the Stonewall hustings he was humiliated and ridiculed over his offensive remarks comparing gay marriage to bestiality.

So after that, what happened today? Only a short time before the event, Boris finally confirmed he wouldn’t be taking part in a hustings at the University of London Union.

This brings us full circle: the Time Out hustings were held at ULU a few weeks ago, and it was Boris’s no-show for that event that propelled the gaffophobia of his minders into the public consciousness.

It seems he has a fear of students, which is bizarre given how many of them have set up Boris-loving groups over on Facebook. Presumably he’s only scared of politically engaged students, since it’s the apathetic ones who think the election is a laugh that he’s counting on the votes of. Let’s hope they think it’s so much of a laugh that they don’t bother going out to vote.

Wes Streeting, President-elect of the National Union of Students, speaking in a personal capacity said:

"It’s a shame Boris Johnson’s minders won’t let him face a student audience. We were looking forward to challenging his reactionary views on everything from tackling racism and advancing LGBT equality to climate change and war."

Boris Johnson chickens out of student hustings – what is he scared of?, KenLivingstone.com

I realise that is taken from his main rival’s web site, but in the interest of balance I just checked Boris’s web site and can find no mention at all of his chickening out of this debate – not even a lame excuse like we were offered for him missing the Time Out one.

In the mean time, by a happy coincidence, a couple of people have contacted us to point out a new video on YouTube highlighting Boris’s fear of scrutiny. Enjoy!

ITV London are recording a debate between the main three candidates tonight, for transmission on ITV1 in London tomorrow evening at 22.40. It’s a full hour long so should provide more space for exploring the issues than any of the TV debates during the campaign have done so far – and so hopefully more chance for Boris to get a good skewering.

As you may already be aware, that’s followed on Thursday night at 22.45 on BBC One by a near-live TV debate between the three, again for an hour, in a special edition of Question Time.

I think there’s also a debate on Sky News next Monday evening, 28 April, just three days before the polls near closure.

It’s all go! Fingers crossed for some election-losing Boris gaffes on all three programmes!

Warning: may make you fall off your chair laughing.

Via The Tory Troll.

I’m just calming down after 50 minutes of non-stop Mayoral fun on BBC One’s Politics Show.

The first half-hour national segment was a discussion between the presenter and the three main candidates, which was actually rather good.

One highlight was Boris claiming his writings in the aftermath of 7 July 2005 were being taken out of context, whereupon the presenter said, OK, here’s the context then, and proceeded to read back a huge extract of Boris’s appalling, divisive, anti-Islamic blatherings, which made it perfectly clear that the context was at least as bad as the individual quotes. These are the quotes about Islam being "the problem" and Islamophobia being "a natural reaction" to reading the Qu’ran, which Boris was spouting while the current Mayor and every faith leader and politician in London were frantically encouraging people of all faiths to stand together against the terrorists who they made very clear did not represent any faith.

Extraordinarily, after sitting looking extremely uncomfortable as his column was read back to him on national TV, Boris made no apology for anything he’d written, instead trying (and failing!) to justify what he’d said but in the process showing how he simply couldn’t be trusted to lead and unite London’s diverse communities.

This segment was followed by the London regional opt-out section, where this week it was Boris’s turn to be grilled by the local host.

This was also a satisfyingly thorough interview, in which we again saw Boris coming unstuck on his Routemaster costings: he’s clinging to his new-found £100m figure with the same illogical desperation that characterised his previous clinging to an £8m figure, despite the fact that even the new £100m price clearly doesn’t cover the cost of conductors or drivers, as the presenter made clear.

He was also caught out on his oft-repeated bleating about the Mayor’s council tax precept being too high: the presenter pointed out that 80% of that is spent directly on extra police to go on the beat, so there is very limited scope for cutting it without also removing police from the street.

Anyone, like me (oh how I long for May), who follows Boris’s media appearances very closely will have found much of what he bumbled on about in this interview familiar: his usual tactic of scrambling to reach one of his pre-learned lines was very much in evidence.

Particularly revealing was towards the end of the interview, when the presenter said that one thing the current Mayor had done early on which was a big, bold idea which separated him clearly from other politicians and the government, and had broadly been successful, was the introduction of the Congestion Charge. He then asked what Boris’s "big idea" would be, that would mark him out as an original and new Mayor and make his mark on the capital in a noticeable way.

First, Boris undertook the usual tactic, ignoring the question and leaping on the words "Congestion Charge" to cough up some scripted statements on "payment on account", "reform", and not introducing the £25 CO₂ charge.

Fortunately the presenter didn’t settle for that, repeating his question and insisting on a proper answer.

Boris bumbled a bit more before finally striking gold. His "big idea", he revealed, was a new airport in the Thames Estuary.

Seriously: Boris’s big idea for London is to put an environmentally damaging airport into an area which is pencilled in for a nature reserve. The Mayor doesn’t have control over building airports. The Mayor also doesn’t have control over the Thames Estuary, which is outside Greater London.

The chances of Boris getting such an airport built are even lower than the chances of the RMT agreeing to his promised no-strike deal. The fact that he can seriously put this forward as his main "big idea" shows just how short on ideas of all sizes he really is.

• You can watch the whole of today’s Politics Show, including the London opt-out, here (until next Sunday lunchtime).

I’ve had a listen to the recording Dave Hill posted and it makes interesting listening, if you’ve an hour and a half to spare!

Oh, alternatively, he’s since updated his post and it now contains some excellent videos of the highlights that he’s posted on YouTube. The third video there is particularly relevant to what I’ve written below.

I was a bit worried that they were giving Boris a bit of an easy ride considering what an integral part of the bitterly fought campaign against gay rights he played with his Section 28-supporting, gay marriage-bashing, widely read columns in the national media.

Fortunately, they did actually move on to his past proclamations on homosexuality and gay marriage, and they certainly didn’t let him gloss over it, but he really didn’t answer them satisfactorily at all.

For a start, an audience member asked (triggering the discussion) why his views on gay matters had changed since he wrote his columns – and he actually rejected the “hypothesis” of the question, saying his views had not changed!

He also refused to apologise for any of his past writings, when asked if he would like to do so by the chair.

So remember, everyone: Boris’s view hasn’t changed since he wrote the things quoted here. A vote for Boris is a vote for homophobic outpourings like those.

Might as well embed Dave’s video, actually:

The Tory Troll was also at the hustings, and was surprised by the lack of effort put in by Team Boris.

Sadly we were unable to attend this morning’s hustings, but fortunately Dave Hill was there and has posted an audio recording, which I’m just listening to now.

Apparently Boris was challenged about his outrageous support for the anti-gay Section 28 legislation and gave an utterly illogical and nonsensical response about believing in liberty – why censor teachers from discussing particular issues with their pupils if you believe in liberty?

I’m delighted to see (on Dave’s blog) that there was a particularly excellent protest outside, by three men and a dog:

That is of course a reference to Boris’s writings on gay marriage a few years ago, when he said that if it was acceptable (and he was "unsure" about that), he could see no reason why we shouldn’t "consecrate a union between … three men and a dog". Well done to those three – and the dog!

Boris continued his record of blundering racial offence yesterday by telling an Asian presenter on BBC radio: "You can’t out-ethnic me".

Unfortunately I hadn’t heard that there was to be a three-way debate between the candidates on the BBC Asian Network yesterday morning (perhaps because I’m not Asian and their station advertising is very well targeted? ), but apparently there was, and the relevant part of the transcript reads:

Boris Johnson: Almost 100 years ago my Turkish great-great grandfather came to London and I’m very proud of that.

Presenter Nihal Arthanayake: What part of your Turkish culture do you maintain?

BJ: A lively … interest in Turkey.

NA: How often do you go and see your family?

BJ: It turns out I’ve got plenty of Turkish cousins living and working in London.

NA: Did you just find out when you needed it to get the ethnic vote?

BJ: I’m happy to say that lots of Turkish relations have been coming and going in our family for a long time.

NA: Are you down with the ethnics?

BJ: I’m down with the ethnics. You can’t out-ethnic me Nihal.

NA: How many bhangra gigs have you been to over the last few years?

BJ: I can’t remember. But my children are a quarter Indian so put that in your pipe and smoke it.

NA: Okay, let’s not try to out-brown each other.

(I’ve taken that from the Evening Standard, which ran a surprising number of anti-Boris pieces yesterday (i.e. any). Their full article on this is here.)

As well as the obvious ‘out-ethnic’ gaffe, and his obvious complete lack of interest in and knowledge of the culture he claims to be so integral to him, I find the comment "It turns out I’ve got plenty of Turkish cousins living and working in London" particularly interesting, because of those first three words: "It turns out". That doesn’t sound like the phrasing of someone who’s taken a keen interest into his ethnic heritage throughout his life: it sounds very much like someone who has paid a lackey to do a quick bit of research to try and get more votes.

And of course the most laughably ridiculous bit is him saying "I can’t remember" when asked how many bhangra gigs he’s been to. I’d be prepared to place a large bet on the answer being an all too memorable zero. Strange that that should slip his mind so easily.

Did I know this was happening? It’s all a bit of a blur. Well, anyway, it is, right now, on ITV1 London.

Review: Well, that was a bit of a waste of time. All previous half-hour debates have been too short to do justice to the issues, so why on earth did the London Tonight team, who had only 25 minutes’ air-time (including a summary of other news), decide that even that wasn’t short enough, and so include a pointless voters’ panel segment?

It was particularly ironic that one of the most vocal people they spoke to on the voters’ panel said that none of the candidates had convinced her at all because "there wasn’t enough detail" about any of their policies. Perhaps if they hadn’t wasted a chunk of their air-time speaking to people like her, the candidates could have fitted in some more detail!

Serious Boris just about held it together. He’s getting slightly better at resisting his selfish urges telling him to interrupt everyone. There was a strange moment when the presenters were throwing to clips of voters in the street asking questions (another time-wasting device) and Boris turned to the camera looking rather annoyed and muttered something, but sadly his microphone was off so I don’t know what that was all about.

But it was basically a rushed mess, so if you missed it through lack of warning from this blog, I make no apology, because you didn’t miss anything worth seeing!

Sky News have secured the final TV debate of the campaign, to be broadcast live, in front of an audience of over 300, on Sky News at 8pm on Monday 28 April.

That’s just three days before the election itself, so here’s hoping for an irrecoverably awful gaffe from Boris during the proceedings!

The latest three-way debate is on tonight at 22.35 on BBC One.

It was recorded last night and sadly no tales of election-losingly momentous gaffes from Boris have leaked out, but it’s still got to be worth tuning in for.