Channel Four’s FactCheck is rarely disputed with much vigour. Most people seem to take their rulings on the chin and move on, except of course if you are Ken Livingstone. Last week his supporters were frothing that C4 had dared to challenge their voodoo “Fare Deal” figures. Retaliations were pushed to unpopular parts of the blogosphere and the usual level of Twitter vitriol was thrown about. Well it seems that didn’t go unnoticed with the FactCheck team who have given Ken another slap this morning:

“The claim:
“Fares might be soaring, but the service is plummeting! Delays and line closures have become a daily part of Londoners’ lives.”
“Sack Boris” election leaflet, 30 January 2012

The verdict:
The figures speak for themselves, and the difference in passenger hours lost – an average of a million a month more under Ken – is particularly striking.

It’s like shooting fish…

Poor old Dave. Mick Jagger has poured salt in the wound. After ditching Cameron’s tea party yesterday, the ageing rocker only went and spent the night (together) with Boris instead. Ouch..

Dave Would Be a Fool to Cry about it though, and can surely understand why it happened; both Jagger and Johnson like women; both can pull a crowd and an evening out with Boris would be far more amusing than discussing trade with the Prime Minister.

Meanwhile back home Ken’s week is going from bad to worse…

Livingstone seems to determined to waste his two point poll lead. As Guido reported yesterday the ”Fare Deal” fell apart after some fairly gentle probing, and now today Ken Livingstone, king of the gaffes and the personalised put downs has written to Boris declaring:

“…no one could have expected that you would react so badly to a little bit of pressure. Suddenly the Conservative party in London is flailing around and lashing out. David Cameron has told you to raise your game. And you, in turn, seem to be getting pushed around by your campaign manager, Lynton Crosby. It has not taken much for your party to turn to the dark side…. At least, I assume it’s him because you used to have something more interesting to say than resort to cheap insults.”

Despite moaning about Lynton Crosby’s attacks and the dark arts, Ken has been unable to pledge to maintain the four-year council tax freeze at the heart of the dispute. On top of that, all this is coming from a man whose campaign strategy consists of following their opponent around yelling “chicken”. What is that if it’s not a “cheap insult”?

There are 98 days to go in this race, if things carry on at this level it’s going to be an extremely tiresome campaign. Ken should go to radio silence, come back on Monday morning and try again…

It didn’t take very long for Ken Livingstone’s “Fare Deal” campaign to unravel. Fact Check – often cited by Labour sorts as the be all and end all of statistical disputes, is damning:

Mr Livingstone is wrong to claim there’s a £729m surplus, and there is no separate budget for investment projects. If he cuts fares, TfL expects to lose £1.12bn in income from fares – and that’s a hole he wouldn’t be able to plug without hitting the day-to-day funding for London’s transport or taking money from investment projects.

How he’d do that is up to him, but it could mean that tube and bus route upgrades are delayed, or TfL could be forced to shed some staff members. Any mayoral candidate can raid the TfL’s coffers to cut fares. But cutting fares could mean cutting investment – which London’s transport system has been sorely starved of for decades. Investing money to bring it up to speed only began in earnest under the last Labour government.

So with one pillar of his campaign in pieces, Ken is on the attack this week. Here is his latest devastating attack ad:

That was officially put out by the campaign. It even comes with powerful “Boris Johns-hen” Twitter account. Game changing stuff…

More bad news for Boris today as a ComRes poll echoes last week’s YouGov offering that had Ken in the lead. The jubilation in Labour circles is on the up, but they obviously didn’t get the same lines Chuka was sent for his appearance on the Sunday Politics yesterday: “Polls go up and down… you’re obsessed with polls Andrew”. Heads in the sand…

YouGov, who called the last Mayoral election with the most accuracy, have Ken in the lead today 51-49. Boris has squandered an eight point lead since the summer. Kellner says it’s too close to call with margin of error…

By all account the Mayor’s  turn at the 1922 Committee hit the spot last night. James Forysth reports that Boris “left no erogenous zone unstroked”, but what Guido hears he said of the LibDems is worth noting. When asked “what are you doing about the Liberals?” he replied:

“Ah, our beloved coalition partners. Crikey. Haven’t even thought about them. What am I doing about the Liberals? When they become a threat I’ll come up with a strategy. What are we doing about the Liberals? …what should I be doing about the Liberals?”

Apparently the Tory backbenchers replied with cries of “love-bomb them”. “What’s that? Love them? Righty ho.” Classic Boris, but rather dampened by the news this morning that the LibDems will not be budging on his proposed airport. The Guardian claim that Downing Street is blaming Boris for letting the yellows throw a spanner in the works with his briefing to the Telegraph. He’d do well to remember that the love-bombing is not mutual… 

Despite the protestations from Nick Clegg, Cameron has given the go ahead for a full blown consultation on Boris Island – the airport plan in the Thames Estuary. The Telegraph says Clegg has been fussing so much that the announcement was delayed from the beginning of the year. Clues that it was coming have been emerging since last summer when Steve Hilton and Osborne backed the idea. It’s Clegg that is being accused of playing politics in the Mayoral election year, but in even longer terms, if the £40bn plan gets the go ahead, it’s Boris who has the most to gain politically. Especially as has he won George Osborne over…

While Ed may be pleased with Unite’s outburst, it puts another leading Labour figure in a rather tricky spot. What’s Ken going to do?

On the one hand he has the unions who are bankrolling his campaign and on the other he has his party leader and machine. His track record is hardly one of party loyalty, but Ed desperately needs a victory in May so the party machine is devoting a lot of resources to the effort. It’s worth remembering that Ken backed Balls for the leadership. Will he still have such kind words for Blinky, now that, as Unite say, he is one of the “four horsemen of the austerity apocalypse“. One to watch in the run up to May…

With the internet being down all morning, the working year has got off to slow start in the Guy Newsroom.  That is not to say there wasn’t much hilarity on the way in. It seems every single person still supporting Ken Livingstone was summoned today to hand out leaflets in the pouring rain at tube stations. Guido was so amused to find that he wasn’t the only one telling them to p**s off, that he tried to film the shenanigans at his stop. For some reason the TFL staff thought he was a domestic terrorist and moved him on…

Downstairs his plan for a quick and easy story didn’t come together very well either. The leaflets to the right were scattered up the length of the platform, but sadly the pencil-skirted young lady with an exquisite derrière, just out of shot, thought Guido was trying to take a picture of something else. Luckily the immediate arrival of a train saved a further altercation with security. Either way Ken’s leafleting drop is hardly the mobilisation his campaign staff are heralding it to be in their post-match tweeting. Nobody seemed very interested. Something the campaign should probably start getting used to…

Forget the roguish charm, forget the hair, forget the bikes and forget those Evening Standard placards; the biggest asset to the Mayor’s re-election campaign is, and will remain, his omni-shambolic opponent. Another day and another gaffe…

Over to Chief Former Mayor Monitor Andrew Gilligan:

“On Monday this week, at a public meeting in the borough of Lewisham, the chair, Val Shawcross, asked the audience for their views about housing policy. Ken came in: “Ask how many people think we should hang George Osborne.” Shawcross: “Well, I’m deliberately not asking questions like that because you never know when there is going to be a journalist in the room.” I enjoyed the implication that it would be all right to demand the killing of the Chancellor if no journalist were present.”

That being said, Team Boris cannot afford to simply sit on their laurels. Ken is going to come at him like a cornered bear. This is the end, the last hurrah, and the former Mayor knows it. The latest campaign ad put out by Boris is horrific. It’s too long, too text heavy, slow, clunky and the music sounds like a low budget airline in-flight safety video:

3 out of 10. See Guido.