Guido can’t see how Ken is going to get through a third week of reputation-ruining speculation that he dodged paying some £50,000 in income tax, unless he publishes his full tax return. If he doesn’t people will assume that he has something to hide. Even his usually vocal partisan supporters are ignoring the tax advoidance issue. Boris is on the attack in the Telegraph this morning. In reference to non-doms, there is no prize for guessing who he’s talking about here:

“At least they are frank about what they are doing. They are not hypocrites, like some people, ahem, I could mention – no names, no pack drill – who foamingly denounce tax avoidance, and call for bankers to be hung, and who then turn out to have elaborate schemes to avoid paying the full whack of income tax on their earnings.”

Ken has gone almost as mute as a newt, bogged down and dodging tax avoidance questions, whereas Boris has spent the weekend promoting his election pledges. On the weekend Nick Cohen in the Observer called for Ken to publish his tax return, rounding on him and questioning why it has taken tax issues for the left to see the light about Ken’s hypocrisy, rather than his penchant for tolerating the company of homosexual-hating clerics and tin pot Latin-American dictators. In some of today’s less surprising news, Ken has been given yet another resounding “fiction” verdict by Channel Four’s Factcheck, who shred his empty promise to reintroduce a London Educational Maintenance Allowance, despite it being ultra vires for a Mayor. Ken: the candidate with limited powers and a limited company…