Ken and Boris accidentally sex up their campaigns

/ Chicken Dinner / 06 April 2008 / 1

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Ken Livingstone's love children and Boris Johnson's close shave with class-A drugs tinge the mayoral campaign with scandal

Not to be outdone by Ken Livingstone's revelation that he has more children than previously believed - quite a few more - Boris Johnson has revealed that he brushed up against cocaine and cannabis as a teenager, something that he dismissed as a "normal student experience." The betting markets have responded to these personal revelations by fractionally widening the gap in price between the candidates. Boris is currently available on Betfair at [1.53] to be next mayor of London, Ken is [2.92].

The mayor's big family bombshell came in an interview with BBC London, in part to preempt the story breaking in a national newspaper, as it was due to in the next few days. Mr Livingstone said that family and close friends already knew exactly how many children he had. "If I had secrets that my family or my close friends didn't know about, then that would be a different matter," he said. "But there's a difference between private and secret and I think the media's got to understand that."

The mayor was thought to have become a father for the first time at age 57 with his current partner, Emma Beale. In fact, that "first" child was his fourth.

Mr Johnson's drug past emerged in a Marie Claire magazine interview published this week, and while causing a bit of a headache for Tory leader David Cameron, benefitted from breaking in the shadow of Ken Livingstone's headlines.

In the interview, Johnson comments on an appearance on Have I Got News For You three years ago, in which he made the extraordinary claim that he nearly took cocaine but blew instead of sucked. "I think I was once given cocaine but I sneezed and so it did not go up my nose. In fact, I may have been doing icing sugar."

He today responded to the interview by claiming, "As I have said many times, I was once at university offered a white substance, none of which went up my nose and I have no idea whether it was cocaine or not."

So, plenty of headlines of the kind that can send an American political career to the depths of the ocean, but which in London apparently generate barely a ripple of indignation. An exclusive YouGov/Evening Standard poll this week found that 62 per cent of Londoners believed the mayoral candidates' private lives "didn't matter". Only one in five said that they did. Boris could have inhaled after all.

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big boy | 07 April 2008

Is Ken's 'secrets' closet now empty? I'm amazed he's managed to keep that under wraps for so long - will he be coming out with the 'Vote Ken - it's not for me, it's for the children' line? Surely he needs this job more than Boris now?