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Ken v Boris: A fightback from the Red corner

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After a week spent entirely on the defensive, Ken Livingstone begins to shake off a nasty bout of scandal fatigue and mount a counter-attack to Boris Johnson's flying start, but out of the blue, one of his worst enemies pops up to offer a helping hand. The betting markets fail to smile on his efforts.

So, Ken is currently at [2.9] on Betfair to win the election, while Boris is way ahead at [1.6]. This gap was opened by national general election polls showing a huge swing to the Tories in the aftermath of the dreariest budget in living memory, and was widened by the first mayoral poll in March giving Johnson a 12-point lead. This is quite a bombshell for Livingstone - not even the Tory party expected Johnson to be having it this easy this early on.

Not surprisingly, given that he was expecting the imbecile Johnson to be a pushover, Ken Livingstone has now become obsessed with him. When news first broke that Johnson was running for London mayor, Livingstone was caught in a photo only two days later struggling through Boris' biography on the tube. Then in January of this year Livingstone wrote a piece for the Guardian where Boris was rubbished almost every other paragraph. And much of his campaign launch address at the Royal Festival Hall last Tuesday consisted of personal attacks like "Boris Johnson couldn't be bothered ... Boris Johnson dismissed my attempt ... Boris Johnson now wishes to abolish ... Boris Johnson doesn't recognise..."

Week after week of allegations of corruption and cronyism have poisoned the national media's view of the City Hall regime, but Livingstone now also has to cope with his old enemy Gordon Brown clapping him on the back. The Prime Minister came out in the Evening Standard on Thursday and officially endorsed Livingstone as "the only choice".

Martin Ivens, writing in the Sunday Times this week on the depth of their mutual loathing, claimed, "It was a sign of desperate times last week that the prime minister ended one of the most bitter feuds in Labour history by sharing a platform with his old enemy. He is "an inspirational figure in London, a crusading mayor and one who has made a difference", said Brown. This reconciliation brings to mind the Low cartoon of Hitler's 1939 pact with Stalin. The Nazi dictator hails his new friend: 'The scum of the earth, I believe?' The Soviet tyrant returns the greeting: 'The bloody assassin of the workers, I presume?'"

To refresh your memory, on January 19, 2000, Gordon Brown wrote a passionate article in the Standard, headlined "Livingstone must not be London mayor," a position he is happy to flip-flop on now that he and his Labour oligarchs have seen the threat Johnson poses to the PM's hold to power (you can't govern Britain successfully if your party has been kicked out of both Edinburgh and London). Voters may be less thrilled by their making nice - as if having the Labour tag weren't bad enough, Ken now has the millstone of a wretchedly unpopular PM around his neck.

In a keynote speech setting out his manifesto in Richmond on Friday, Livingstone challenged the "tired and out-of-date" label Johnson is pinning on him by responding with a glut of policies that have a strong emphasis on the environment. His pledges included £500 million worth of new commuter routes into the City for cyclists, and an ambitious energy plan designed to take away supply from the National Grid. There was a generous amount of Boris-baiting too.

The speech has put Ken back in his element - as a maverick craftsman of social policy. Even Johnson admits the race is more even than polls suggest: "King Newt can be defeated but he is well entrenched". But the policy skirmish also presents a paradox: the more Livingstone attacks Mr Johnson, the more he shows how formidable his rival has become since his days as a figure of fun.