FORMER and possible future London Mayor Ken Livingstone has said Boris Johnson “is not honest” and “has just gone through life shambling like Bertie Wooster”.


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The feisty comments are published the day before Livingstone finds out if he is to be the Labour Party candidate for the next London Mayor election in 2012. Livingstone is expected to beat his main rival for the nomination, Oona King.

“[Boris] isn’t really honest,” Livingstone told music website The Quietus.

“He said during the last campaign fares are too high, then he rams them up. He has broken every promise.”

Possibly even more damning is Livingstone’s view that Johnson isn’t up to the job, due to idleness.

“Boris has just gone through life shambling like Bertie Wooster, ‘oops sorry I’ve fallen on your wife’, ‘oops, what a laugh’,” said Livingtone, Mayor between 2000 and 2008.

“He just doesn’t do anything. It’s just laziness.”

Livingstone believes the Mayor needs to be busy making the case against the spending cuts that central government plan to visit on London.

“I intend to make the election a referendum on what the Tory government is doing,” he told the Muslim News earlier this week.

“They didn’t say honestly that they were going to increase VAT. I will seek an honest mandate that says ‘no more cuts’ and I will challenge them on that.

“The only way out of this recession is public sector investment, modernizing our infrastructure, investing in new emerging industries around the environment of technology, building houses that people live in.”