When Hugo Chavez came to town Guido thought to himself, hello, here we go again. The revelation in Dispatches that Ken has surrounded himself with members of a far left sect, Socialist Action, shows just how far the Cuddly Ken of 2000 has reverted to form, the Red Ken of the 1980s has returned with his old friends. This time they have six-figure salaries.

Doing a deal with Chavez so that impoverished Venezuela subsidises fuel for rich London in return for putting El Presidente’s face on the side of the buses shows just how loony things are getting in London. Ken’s embassy in China, his globe trotting, his delusions of grandeur and conduct of a foreign policy without a mandate from Londoners is worrying enough.

Combine this with a manifest smell of corruption that pervades around the shakedown merchant Lee Jasper, both financial and political corruption of a kind that we haven’t seen since the days of Militant in Liverpool under Derek Hatton.

Garnish all this with appeasement of Islamist extremists at the same time as Livingstone demonstrates an implicit distate for Israel. It is a toxic concoction. The Loony Left is back in London… this time Ken is not just drunk on power…