Despite there being well over a month until polling day, it seems that Ken is going to new and extraordinary lengths to provide his gaffe-of-the-day. This morning he went all Al Gore on us and told the BBC that: “When I was leader of the GLC I said to Mrs Thatcher we needed broadband linking every home and City in the country.”  He must have kept his 1980s internet connection top secret…

After yesterday’s ‘rich Jews won’t vote Labour‘ gaffe, Ed has, once again, been forced to defend his candidate, claiming that Ken “doesn’t have a prejudiced bone in his body”. Guido hears from his sources that Labour’s own private polling is doing the rounds and shows that the only person more unpopular in London than Ken is Ed Miliband. At this rate they are going to go down together…

While the leadership and their cheerleaders in the unpopular parts of the blogosphere bury their heads in the sand, and least one Labour figure has found some balls: former MP turned GLA candidate Andrew Dismore has described Ken’s latest bile as “rather offensive”. It’s a shame others don’t have a spine…

Ken has also been rambling today:

“He told the Standard he will use “amazing charm and subtlety” to get New York-style independence for the capital. Mr Livingstone, 66, added: “I would actually declare independence and run the whole city. They can’t even run hospitals in London. Everything government does in London it gets wrong. If you look at the city of New York, the mayor runs the benefits system, some of the prisons even, and the healthcare and schools. I’ve watched all my life, irrespective of which government… ministers trying to run hospitals from Whitehall. It’s just too big, too complicated.”

Presumably he wrote his magic money tree manifesto with these changes in mind? Or was he on the sauce again?

UPDATE: Talking of Ken’s love of the sauce, this is rather good: