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!

Apparently some people might not think that the Stop Boris blog would have provided an accurate and impartial take on last night’s Newsnight debate, for some reason. Honestly, next you’ll be saying the Evening Standard can’t be trusted to provide balanced coverage of the election campaign.

The account posted here last night is not exactly contradicted elsewhere on the internet though, and not just by anti-Boris types.

It’s particularly interesting to have a read through some of the comments on Iain Dale’s miserable coverage. (Presumably part of the reason for his grumpiness is that his party’s candidate for Mayor had just been exposed as a useless idiot!)

Some of the highlights from the comments are:

Sadly and very surprisingly though, Boris was crap - I mean just really REALLY bad. He had verbal dioreha, was blabbing on and saying nothing cohessive, speaking way too fast, unable/unwilling to answer the question on the cost of new routemasters (bad briefing), which was reminiscent of Paxman’s eviscertation of Micheal Howard!

If he had used his wit it owuld have been better.

I thought he was going to walk it!

Shabolic performance by Boris and I agree with Iain’s analysis of old “What’s his name?” (the Liberal Democrat candidate. Ken was relaxed but none of them was able tog et a word in edge ways. Someone tell Boris to stop interrupting!!!!!

If, like me, you have grave misgivings about leaving London in the hands of an arrogant Trotskyite berk then you would do the sensible thing and vote for the candidate most likely to oust the git. That would be Bojo. The trouble is - he’s shit. On tonight’s evidence this city would be in the hands of a bumbling, rambling, clueless(if likeable) nitwit.
Stop waffling on about bloody bendy buses, please! What’s he on about now, Routemasters? WTF???
Very depressing. Poor old London. It deserves much, much better.

Johnson reminded me of a graduate in his first ever job interview and he hadn’t done a stroke of preparation. Lamentable

The Tories dug their own grave by appointing BoJo. I almost wish they had s erious candidate, as I dislike Leavingsoon as much as anyone.

Boris Johnson came over as a lightweight joke. Why on earth did the Tories choose him? He bumbled his way through the whole event.

Boris was by far and away the worst. And Paxman actually showed how unmanageable the clown actually is. […]

Boris would be a disaster for London. Slippery, wet, dangerously vague, bullshitter.

Boris was just an embarassment. As a Tory, I don’t know who to vote for now. Why didn’t he prepare?

Andrew Sparrow on the Guardian’s Politics Blog has further coverage, and links to further coverage still. Dave Hill, as seen on BBC London this evening, has a brief response to Newsnight too, while Dave Cole goes into more depth.

Alternatively, rather than relying on everyone else’s coverage, you could just watch it for yourself. Here are two useful links, depending on how much time you have to spare:

• Two minutes: Paxman despairs at Boris’s bendy bus blathering
• 32 minutes: the whole thing (in RealPlayer format)

Enjoy – and let us know what you think. Will the polls continue to slip (slightly) away from Boris if he keeps up these performances?

P.S. Liberal Conspiracy have a similar, shorter but better lip-sync’ed video of the Boris bus blathering on their home page at the moment. Apologies to them for the fact that the StopBoris.org spam filter meant I didn’t see their e-mail telling me this until three hours after they sent it!

ITV London have got in on the act and are hosting a TV debate on Monday 21 April.

If you’d like to be in the audience and throw some tough questions about the Kyoto protocol or the cost of his own stupid buses at Boris, call 020 7261 3969 or e-mail londondecides@itv.com.

This was the first of a number of televised three-way debates in the coming weeks, including a BBC London one next week and culminating with a Question Time special the week after that.

Boris’s opening speech was read out fairly competently, but he did keep having to suppress that smirk of his.

It was all downhill from there for him though, once the debate proper began.

Slippage

He did his best to hold in place the mask that Lynton Crosby has worked hard to cultivate on Boris over the past few months – the mask of a proper, competent politician – but there was no way this idiot could keep it in place over the course of a full half-hour.

So we saw it slipping to reveal parts of the old, bumbling Boris, who had no grasp of the figures, and indeed barely any grasp of how to construct a sentence: for instance, he told us that if issued with an ID card, he would

grind it up and eat it on my children’s cornflakes

which seems a bit mean to his children, who will presumably be left to go hungry. (Not to mention hazardous to his health – although he’s more renowned for snorting ground-up hazardous substances than eating them, of course.)

Boris also informed us that the people watching Newsnight are its “readers”.

Experience

One of the early wins for the other candidates was when Brian called his bluff on his much-trumpeted line about being the only one of the three with any experience of running a private organisation: Brian got his retaliation in first by turning it round on Boris, saying that the only management experience he had was managing a tiny organisation of about 20 people! Boris stammered his way to a mumbled correction of this but could only take it up to “at least 50 people”, which didn’t exactly make Brian’s point any weaker, when the job of Mayor involves managing 105,000 people!

Bus black hole

It was, as expected, his grasp of figures where Boris really came unstuck, though, particularly in relation to the legendary bus black hole.

Jeremy Paxman became increasingly frustrated by Boris’s apparent attempt to filibuster away the question of the cost of his hare-brained bendy-bus replacement scheme, by simply talking on, and on, and on, and on, and on, without really saying anything informative at all.

(In fact, Paxman gave him one minute and 47 seconds to come up with a figure, which is quite some time on live TV. In total, Paxman asked Boris 15 times to clarify his policy in this area, and in fact the last 12 of those times are straightforward pleading for the cost of the buses. It was like that classic Michael Howard interview – “Did you threaten to overrule him?” – all over again!)

Essentially, we were back to the good old days of the Andrew Marr Show interview, when Boris simply couldn’t answer what he was being asked and Marr literally found himself on the edge of his seat with exasperation at trying to get him to finish a sentence (preferably by actually answering what he had been asked).

Likewise, Paxman moved ever closer to the podium on which the three candidates were standing, begging Boris to give him a figure, but none was forthcoming. For a moment I thought Paxman might mount the stage and give him a slap, but sadly it didn’t quite come to that!

In the end, with extraordinary cheek – not to mention a revealing implicit admission about his arch-rival’s superior grasp of figures – Boris turned to Ken and asked him how much Ken’s bus plan would be costing, on the basis that he thought his own would cost a similar amount!

Spoilt

Even after all that, Boris still wouldn’t shut up, suddenly interrupting Brian (who had moved on to talking about trams) to ask to be allowed to say one more thing about his beloved uncosted buses. Paxman slapped him down thus:

No! No you can’t! You’ve said quite enough without enlightening us with a figure! You have a think about it: give us a figure and you can talk again.

Boris still continued to try to make his point as his microphone was faded out, providing evidence of the spoilt temperament that Janet Street-Porter hints at in her Marie Claire interview with him.

In that interview she suggests that people never say ‘no’ to him, and he is very uncomfortable and unsure how to respond. Tonight we saw the result of someone who’s spent his life surrounded by yes-men, underlings and hero-worshippers: a tendency to interrupt and talk over others repeatedly, and to assume that he was the most important person in the room.

This was clearly noticeable at the very end of the debate, when the debate’s allotted time on the programme had expired. Paxman held up his hand to signal to them to stop whichever bit of bickering was ongoing at the time.

Boris: Can I just say…?

Jeremy: No, I’m afraid, I’m very sorry, you can’t.

Boris: Why not?

Jeremy: [Somewhat taken aback by the question] Because we’re out of time!

“Why not?”? What kind of question is that? It was obvious to everyone else that their time was up, but apparently if Boris thinks what he has to say is important, it won’t do for anyone to try to stop him saying it.

A vote for Boris is a vote for a spoilt, incompetent and bumbling man with no relevant experience or grasp of the figures. For London’s sake, please vote for someone else.

As well as Newsnight tomorrow, BBC London next week and Question Time the week after, today’s Channel 4 News at Noon was followed by an advert alerting me to the fact that this Thursday, 10 April, will see the three leading candidates participating in their first live radio debate, on LBC 97.3, available on FM and DAB.

The snappily-named LBC 97.3FM Mayoral Debate with Nick Ferrari kicks off at 8am, and the web site includes a form for you to submit your questions for the candidates in advance.

Alternatively, you can call in during the debate on 0845 60 60 973 if you’d like to join in then.

According to the web site:

No-one is better placed to take on the three main candidates than Nick Ferrari. He was David Cameron’s first choice to be the Conservative mayoral candidate, he is also the radio presenter Ken Livingstone tried to get sacked – after Nick gave out Ken’s phone number on-air.

Sounds like a lovely bloke, particularly when you add a bit of Wikipedia into the mix:

Broadcasting Standards Committee complaint

In 2003 The Broadcasting Standards Committee upheld a complaint against Ferrari, finding that his programme’s "active reinforcement of prejudiced views about asylum seekers had exceeded acceptable boundaries for transmission".

Hmm. I might have been on the lookout for right-wing bias in his treatment of the three candidates in the debate, were it not for the fact that it sounds like he’s to the right of all of them.

As promised, we’ve got some audio and photos from the Time Out hustings on Wednesday.

The audio is not exactly of brilliant quality (it was recorded from quite near the back of the room) but if you’re really determined to hear what you missed, it’s just about listenable:

Time Out hustings full recording (MP3, 1hr20, 27.5MB)

The pictures are behind the cut:

(more…)

When Boris’s team decide to change their strategy, they certainly do change it: it’s just been announced that BBC Newsnight will host the first televised debate between the three leading candidates next Tuesday, 8 April.

Submit your questions for Boris now on this page, which contains one of the most enticing invitations I’ve ever seen:

What questions would you like Jeremy Paxman to ask Boris Johnson?

Goodness me – where does one begin?

Since gaffophobia hit the mainstream media, there have been a couple of interesting announcements.

Apparently Boris will now take part in a couple of TV debates with the other candidates in the coming weeks.

On last night’s BBC London they announced a forthcoming pre-recorded debate with the main candidates, including Boris, being recorded on (if I remember correctly) 14 April. You may be able to join the audience for this if you e-mail to register your interest.

And a short time ago on this evening’s Question Time on BBC One, David Dimbleby announced that on 24 April, the show will come from London and will also feature the main candidates for Mayor taking questions from the audience. Should be a must-see programme, coming just one week before London goes to the polls. If you want to be among those putting questions to them, register your interest via the Question Time web site.

Congratulations to everyone who covered the determination of the Boris campaign to keep him out of the spotlight: it looks like the coverage has shamed him back into it!

Another anecdote reaches us from last night’s Time Out hustings.

One Boris-stopper was approached outside the event beforehand by one of the Boris-backers, who offered him a leaflet.

“No thanks!”

“Oh come on, you want one really!”

“No, I really don’t - you have no idea just how much I don’t want one.”

“Who do you think would be a better Mayor than Boris then?”

“Pretty much any of the other candidates.”

“Even Ken Livingstone?”

“Well, yeah, he’s been good.”

“Good? Hah! He hasn’t been good. For a start, crime is up in London…”

An argument ensued.

There are no two ways about this: this is an out-and-out lie. Crime is not up in London. Police recorded crime figures have fallen every year for the past five years or so.

Brian Paddick’s approach to this is to turn instead to the British Crime Survey (BCS), which covers unreported crime as well, using statistical polling techniques to get a picture of overall crime. He claims these figures show that crime has remained steady in London for the past four years, but actually the BCS has only had London broken out into a separate region in it for the past two years, which it’s difficult to extract any trend from.

But whatever way you look at whatever statistics, it’s impossible to draw the conclusion that, as this person from Boris’s campaign was insisting, “crime is up”.

It looks like Lynton Crosby is living up to his reputation for saying anything, no matter how false, to get his employer elected.

A few Boris-stoppers [i.e. members of the Facebook group and other followers of the campaign] went along to the Time Out hustings this evening, and want to fill Stop Boris blog readers in on what happened.

A couple turned up early to hand out the stickers - nice one, quick work printing those out! - and were surprised to find about ten people in Back Boris t-shirts, handing out Boris leaflets and trying to excuse his no-show.

The leader of the Back Boris campaigners - the assumption is that he was the leader, as he was the only one who stayed around to heckle inside the actual event - kept trying to start up chants, which were laughable in a number of ways:

1. The most-repeated one compared Ken Livingstone to Robert Mugabe (”Goodbye Mugabe/Next is Ken/Let’s make London/Smile again”);
2. This one bloke was the only one bothering to chant anything, so it just sounded like a lone weirdo rather than a political chant;
3. Best of all, he was reading the chants from a computer-printed sheet of A4 paper! Did they have to be approved by Lynton Crosby too?!

The sticker-distributers report brisk business, offloading dozens of the things in the 20 minutes or so they were working the area, as well as putting up with some heckling from the Boris-backers, who seemed to think that their campaigning was better than the Boris-stoppers because it was “positive” - obviously most of their chants mentioning Boris providing an opportunity to get rid of Ken was not thought to be negative campaigning.

Apparently one of the Boris-stoppers even caught Mr. Livingstone himself on the way in, and he was only too happy to add a Stop Boris sticker to the lapel of his overcoat!

The hustings itself was entertaining and informative in fairly equal measures, but the aforementioned Back Boris campaign leader made a bit of a pest of himself, heckling and seeming most put out that - like everyone else in attendance - he was limited to a single question from the floor. He used this to attack Ken rather than promote Boris - that’ll be that positive campaigning he was proclaiming earlier, presumably!

It was clear to all who’ve been in touch that the atmosphere was pretty favourable towards the three candidates on stage - Ken, Brian and Siân - and pretty hostile towards Boris, which lends further support to the suggestions he avoids any event where he thinks he’ll get asked any difficult questions or come under any serious scrutiny.

The best opening line came from Siân Berry:

I’ve been asked to speak about my vision for London over the next 40 years. In some ways, this hustings is already a lot like it: it doesn’t have Boris Johnson in it!

Sadly there was no tub of lard in the place of Boris, but Ken did turn up with a children’s book called Calm Down, Boris!, which he placed on the table behind Boris’s name card. This transpired to be some sort of book/puppet hybrid, which Ken then played with while the chair mentioned Boris’s absence.

It’s not Stop Boris’s job to assess the other candidates’ performances, other than to say, unsurprisingly, that it was clear that any one of these people would certainly make a better Mayor with a clearer vision and better grasp of policy than Boris.

Afterwards, the Boris-stoppers with the stickers bumped into Siân Berry, and offered her one. Her response was apparently: “Can I have a whole sheet please? I love the web site!” She received a whole sheet.

We’ve been promised some photos and perhaps even audio clips of this evening’s events by those Boris-stoppers in attendance. We’ll post these when we have them. If you have any good ones, or anything else to report about tonight that we haven’t been told about, please get in touch!