Sadiq Khan appears to have wheeled out a new tactic in attempt to get re-elected as London Mayor – wheeling out fake news attack ads against Shaun Bailey on Facebook. The London Labour Party’s Facebook page has been promoting a story from ‘Inside Croydon’ which claims that Bailey is considering scrapped Freedom Passes for people between 60 and 75. The only problem is it’s completely untrue…

The Inside Croydon blog is heavily partisan against the Tories, the article itself cites no sources, it simply says that the suggestion was raised at a “discussion forum” at last year’s Conservative Party Conference. As Adam Bienkov’s snarky live-tweets from the session make clear, the idea was just an unprompted suggestion from a member of the audience. Long after Bailey himself had left…

Team Bailey say they have tried to correct the story but have been ignored – Bailey’s publicly-stated policy is to “protect the Freedom Pass”. Bailey has now written formally to Khan to complain about Labour sharing the story which is “not only disingenuous but completely false and unacceptable” and call for Khan to retract the advert and apologise. Read his letter in full here…