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.

They’re all in agreement today that Boris would be a disaster. That’s always good to see.

Unsurprisingly, Polly’s not a fan of Boris.

Actually, despite the headline and the article’s web address, her piece primarily focuses on positive reasons to give one of your two votes to Ken, but since that’s now our advice too it’s well worth a read if you’re having any doubts about whether it’s a good idea.

Here’s the main anti-Boris bit:

When Londoners vote on Thursday, surely it’s a no-brainer? Here is an effete and frivolous Tory only doing it for fun and fame. Never known for passionate commitment to anything but himself, his strongly rightwing views are contemptuously ignorant of all social policies: we know this from his writings. His bewilderingly few policies are to stop Ken’s requirement that developers include 50% affordable housing in new building projects; to replace bendy buses at a cost he cannot name; to abandon local policing; to cut costs; and … well, that’s it.

That’s it, indeed. It should be a no-brainer. Unfortunately Lynton Crosby’s been lobotomising armies of outer Londoners (and I write as one myself, who has fortunately managed to avoid the brainwashing), who will happily overlook Boris’s total inadequacy and incompetence as they march to the polls chanting his meaningless "time for a change" mantra. I suppose it’s a no-brainer in the sense of there evidently being no brains engaged in those voting for Boris!

Could support from this **** be an even bigger embarrassment to Boris than the support of the BNP? Littlejohn and the BNP are certainly just as racist and just as misogynistic as each other.

In London, Livingstone is relying on a huge turnout among innercity Muslims.

If previous experience is anything to go by, "community leaders" will simply collect the ballot papers from bewildered Muslims, especially women, and "help" them cast their votes.

I await a statement from Boris that he "abominates" everything Littlejohn stands for and does not want a second preference vote from any Littlejohn reader.

P.S. It’s interesting that even Richard Littlejohn has his doubts:

We’ve all got our reservations but [Boris] deserves a go. If he screws up, we can kick him out in four years’ time.

Hmm. It’s a long time, four years.

Dave Hill looks at Ken’s and Boris’s respective transport policies and draws the only sensible conclusion: Boris would be hopeless.

He’s not the first person to make this point (and I’m not saying we were either), but Paul Waugh puts it rather well on his Evening Standard blog.

George Psaradakis, the driver of the Number 31 bus that was bombed on 7/7, was on hand to introduce Ken. "Ken Livingstone gave London the leadership our city needed that day," he said, before receving a tearful hug from the Mayor.

Now, no one in the Ken camp is so crass as to want to make the events of 7/7 a centrepiece of his re-election campaign, but they do feel it encapsulates The Choice the capital faces on May 1.

The Mayor pointed out that just as the Olympic bid had needed years of detailed preparation to succeed, so the calm and efficient response to the terror attack had been long in the planning. […]

If another terror attack took place under Mayor Boris’s watch, what kind of speech could and would he give?

There are other good points in his post too, so give it a read.

It’s nice to see someone attempting balance at the Standard, which today continues its appalling, corrupt, biased coverage, penned by self-proclaimed "Boris Johnson supporter" Andrew Gilligan, which today sees him conjuring up more extremely tenuous links between Ken and some sort of fabricated corruption in ethnic minority communities.

Apparently, in one case, a Latin American newspaper in London has been running full-page ads from its own publisher encouraging its readers to vote for Ken. This is, we are assured by Mr. Gilligan, outrageous.

Can anyone think of any other newspapers, perhaps with bigger circulations and higher profiles, which have devoted page after page after page to attempting to influence the outcome of the Mayoral election? I’ll see if I can remember any such newspapers and perhaps offer a follow-up post later looking at their own corruption if so.

Her article in the Times today doesn’t contain much more substance than fellow comedy columnist Charlie Brooker’s article from a couple of weeks ago, and indeed she uses a similar description of one segment of Boris’s fanbase, what she terms the “BorisROFLMAO vote”. One difference is that her article, unlike Brooker’s, doesn’t seem to be particularly amusing, but I suppose that’s subjective!

Anyway, I’m not knocking her, she’s On Our Side, and in a newspaper which desperately tried to pretend on Saturday that it wasn’t, so it’s all good.

I will NOT be voting for Boris. Quite aside from being a ditzy, posh, albino fanny-hound, he has a far greater impediment to running one of the greatest cities in the world: he is disabled by his own funniness. I understand Boris’s weakness. I understand it only too well. As someone who spends most of her life trying to be funny, I know just how much effort it takes. It’s like running a quiet heroin habit on the side. It’s a full-time commitment. It makes you fatally, fundamentally, unsuitable for a job with genuine responsibilities and consequences.

The rumour was true.

One of the interesting bits of information in there, though, is that Brian Paddick is apparently getting the most second preferences. The second preferences of people voting for Ken or Boris first almost certainly won’t be counted anyway (but Brian is a good use for them as last-ditch insurance against the other main candidate), but if anyone else is putting Brian second it’s almost inconceivable that that isn’t just a wasted vote.

To get the best use of your two votes, if your first choice isn’t Ken/Boris, you need to put whoever you want for Mayor first and then Ken second to stop Boris (or vice versa if you’re insane ).

More voting advice is, as you probably know by now, here.

The First Post informs me that Boris Johnson’s minders have twice turned down invitations for him to be interviewed alongside his two main rivals on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

The central aim of Johnson’s minder-in-chief, Aussie Lynton Crosby, has been to prevent his candidate from living up the his ‘Blundering Boris’ reputation. He has been more successful than many Tories feared but the maximum point of danger for Johnson has been whenever he appeared before the media on his own.

The contest between Johnson, Labour’s incumbent Livingstone, and the lacklustre Lib-Dem Brian Paddick has received daily news coverage on the BBC and ITV stations in the capital. Boris Johnson has twice been ‘kebabed’ by Neil and Paxman and looked like a rabbit on the headlights on Question Time with David Dimbleby as the assertive ringmaster.

So it’s no surprise that his minder Crosbie [sic] wants to avoid the possibility of gaffes in the last few days of the campaign - hence the desire to avoid Today. Under electoral law and BBC guidelines the programme producers only have to give him the opportunity to take part. If he fails to turn up, they can go ahead and interview his rivals leaving an empty chair and switched-off microphone for Johnson.

A late surge of gaffophobia, eh? Sounds like his team are getting very jittery in these final days. It’s all to play for, Boris-stoppers!

It’s the Independent’s turn to print a leader column about the Mayoral election today, but it frustratingly lacks a conclusion. Perhaps that’s the Independent way, is it? Do they always stay on the fence, to fit with their name, or is it just on this occasion? I must confess to not being that familiar with their output.

Anyway, I think the implication, reading between the lines, is the same as the Observer’s explicit recommendation from yesterday, Siân 1, Ken 2, but it’s not certain. This is what they have to say about Boris though:

it is not enough for one candidate to look past his sell-by-date. Another must inspire. The Conservative mayoral campaign has been tightly-run and professional; its tactics have been largely based on reining in its candidate’s more flamboyant instincts. But for all that, it is hard to see even the new, more serious, Mr Johnson as Mayor of a world city such as London. The Conservative candidate has never shown any real interest in the capital in the past. Nor does he have any experience of public administration. And the innate cautiousness of his campaign means that, in policy terms, he has outlined nothing much to excite Londoners.

Absolutely. I noticed in Saturday’s Guardian they spoke to a keen Boris voter in Bexley (one of the outer London boroughs targeted so closely by Lynton Crosby’s campaign), but when they asked him, in response to him saying that Boris "has some good policies", which particular policies he liked, he "tailed off", only coming alive again, with criticism, when Ken was mentioned. Certainly sounds like Crosby and co have done some successful brainwashing around there: that’s all their key messages installed in a real-life voter.

Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to matter that their key messages are utterly meaningless ones – Ken’s rubbish (the Evening Standard says so, so it must be true); it’s time for a change/fresh ideas; we have some good policies but don’t ask what they are because they don’t really exist in any useable level of detail; and did we mention that Ken is rubbish?

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.

A keen Boris-stopper just tipped us off about Time Out’s final verdict on the race to be Mayor, which is a very fair and balanced article, weighing up and comparing various aspects of both contenders.

The only down side is that it doesn’t actually give a recommendation of how to vote at the end, but to the eyes of both us and our correspondent, it’s pretty clear that there’s nothing in here to suggest voting Boris, and plenty to suggest not doing so.

I’ve been impressed during this campaign by how well Time Out ‘get’ London; of course, one would expect them to do so, but it’s nice to find they are so in tune with this great city and all it stands for. Unlike, I am duty-bound to add, a certain Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson.

Even after all this time, Boris’s "scary" (his word) campaign managers are still keeping him away from any media outlet they don’t think will give him glowing praise or provide a strategic boost to their campaign.

Cole Moreton writes in today’s Independent on Sunday (thanks to Dave Hill for pointing it out) about how Boris’s minders have made it completely impossible for him to get even a minute of time with Boris to ask him a question or two. Their lies and excuses to avoid this reporter are exposed towards the end of the article, when they have no time to speak to him but suddenly find just enough time to suck up to Muslim voters on Al-Jazeera:

I am next, and the only one left … but just as Boris opens his mouth to speak, the handler places his body between us. They have to go, he says nervously but insistently. Right now.

"Cole was with me on the stump in my first campaign in Henley," Boris protests. The old pro has either been forewarned, or this is an example of that prodigious memory that allows him to quote the Greeks at length.

"Cole is my first priority!" he insists, not entirely plausibly, but the handler has other ideas. Al-Jazeera has appeared. Suddenly, it seems, they are not in such a hurry to go. Boris tells the reporter he is proud of his Muslim ancestors, rattles off a few answers then turns back to me. The room is almost empty. Every single reporter or broadcast journalist who wants it has been given time. But not me.

"We really do have to go," insists the handler, who has obviously had firm instructions not to let us speak. Boris shrugs, and flashes one of those smiles that have helped him get away with so much. He’s sorry, he’s so busy, he’ll ring me. In the morning. Absolutely.

I know he won’t. Even if he wants to. (And so, in time, it proves.)

The article is well worth a read, and provides yet more evidence of Lynton Crosby’s cynical, manipulative and downright dishonest campaign of avoiding media outlets that will scrutinise his candidate properly. No wonder no-one has been able to provide any positive reasons to vote for Boris: there aren’t any, but no-one has been able to get close enough to expose that!

At last! I have just stumbled across a link to a video I’ve been looking for for ages.

It’s a BBC London report from six months ago, showing just how completely hopeless Boris is at getting to grips with figures and details. You may want to share this link with anyone who suggests he isn’t a bumbling incompetent who’s far too risky to trust with an £11bn budget!

Ironically, his appeal to "Victoria" in the audience during one of his rambling pronouncements is an appeal to one of the other people who’d put herself forward for the Conservative party’s mayoral candidacy, but had lost out to the blond buffoon. It seems that even Boris thinks someone else would have been a more competent and knowledgeable candidate than he is!

Sadly I’m more than a week too late to include this footage in the video for MYR of LDN, as I’d originally been hoping to do, although I did get a short clip of it in there from a subsequent BBC London report that used archive footage of the "Victoria knows this figure" moment.

An extremely kind Boris-stopper has gone to the trouble of transcribing the whole of Boris’s interview on PM from just over a week ago.

The whole thing is behind the cut, but here are a few of the best questions:

• Who’s running for Mayor, old Boris or new Boris? The clown or the careful career politician?
• The RMT have called a tube strike today for April 28^th and 29^th. Your policy on strikes with regards to them is a bit of a joke isn’t it?
• Just on localism on smoking if I may, which was the topic in hand. Is localism more important than saving people from cancer and second-hand smoke?

All in all, we can see in this interview how desperate Boris always is to steer things back to his simplistic pre-learned lines on a few limited topic areas, and avoid any serious scrutiny of his policies, to the extent that he quickly becomes exasperated and angry-sounding as soon as anyone dares to question him. There’s plenty of evidence here of his propensity to interrupt, talk over and ignore people at any opportunity, too - congratulations to the transcriber for managing to decipher both sides of such talking clashes!

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