The contest between Ken Livingstone and Boris Johnson looks set to take a negative turn later today when Mr Johnson publishes a new report called ‘Ken’s Broken Promises’.
The report starts by stating: “Ken Livingstone is desperate to cling to office. He will do or say whatever he thinks he needs to in order to win.” before inviting voters to “Imagine 4 more years of it.”
Included in the charges against Mr Livingstone is the accusation that he “Failed to stand up against controversial figures preaching hate” and has not delivered on”a commitment on the environment to expand the London schools environment programme to secondary schools.”
Mr Johnson says the report shows his opponent “cannot be trusted to deliver on his promises.”
He also says Mr Livingstone is “not a man of his word and has consistently promised to do one thing during an election only to not deliver it afterwards.”
The report concludes with the statement “It is the Mayoral candidate’s duty to make such promises practical and realistic, and then pursue these to the fullest extent possible as Mayor, not just treat them as nothing more than a trick to get elected.”
Publication of the report comes a day after the Sunday Telegraph quoted Johnson as saying he expected his rival “will fight dirty”.
According to the paper Mr Johnson predicted that Labour “will say absolute codswallop” about him and urged supporters not to “take any notice of the lies they will tell.”
A spokeswoman for Ken Livingstone’s campaign accused Johnson of “collapsing into purely negative campaigning following the exposure of the £2 a week bus fare increase that would be required to fund his policy of reintroducing buses with conductors, the fact that Tory boroughs such as Barnet, which he asks Londoners to trust to deliver more affordable housing rather than having a firm 50% affordable housing policy, last year built only 10 per cent affordable housing, the revelation that he did not even vote in parliament on Crossrail and other fiascos.”
Defending their candidate’s record the Livingstone campaign says Johnson “is attempting desperately to disguise the huge successes of delivery of London’s services in the last eight years – nearly two million more passengers a day on the buses, 10,000 extra uniformed officers on the streets, crime reduced for five years in a row, increase in the number of new houses built from 17,000 a year to 33,000 a year, racist attacks down by nearly 60 per cent and London leading world cities on the environment and climate change.”
