Boris has claims in today’s Sunday Telegraph that his email has been hacked, his computer compromised and that his opposition are resorting to lying and dirty tricks to try and win the Mayor election. He’s definitely hardening his stance and attacking as the first form of defence. It’s great to see – but does anyone miss the humour?

Tremendous news has flooded into the Boriswatch inbox. According to The Times (hardly a traditional avid Boris supporter), Gordon Brown “has all but written off Ken Livingstone’s chances of winning the London mayoral election.” This, ladies and gentlemen, can only mean one thing – Boris is destined for Mayor!
There are two main reasons for their dismay. Firstly, Boris’s campaign manager Lynton Crosby is coordinating a very clever “Zone 5 and 6″ campaign, targeting the area around the outer band of the Tube’s network in order to win votes in crucial enclaves.
The second reason? Madonna may well be voting for him.

If Boris wins, will we be waving goodbye to the old, jovial and downright amusing Boris Johnson? The two sides are interchangeable, argues Boris himself in this video excerpt from Reuters.

The Times delivers an article trying to get under the skin of the new self-restrained BoJo – and thoroughly fails. It’s not far away though, reasons Alice Mills.

An excellent insight into a day on the Mayoral campaign trail comes from the Guardian Backbencher email sent to inboxes today. Here’s an excerpt:

“Saturday morning and the Backbencher heads to mayoral hustings in west London. But Ken’s not there. Even Paddick isn’t there. Boris is left practically hosting the hustings, lingo-bombing the audience with new terms for road potholes – “enigmatic craters” – and commuting – “armpit-nuzzling hell” – before setting off out into the neighbourhood along with black social worker Shaun Bailey, who will contest the area at the next election (with boundaries redrawn). The Backbencher is alarmed. Before her eyes, a general, not London, election walkabout is taking place.

Boris approaches black constituents and a number are now saying he gets their vote. Emphatically.

Bailey lingers at the back of the caravan and gripes to the local reporter about the man who’ll be his Labour challenger after the boundary change. “I met two rival candidates the other day who didn’t bitch about each other but they were women. Here? It’s war. He never spends any time in his own constituency. He’s always in my end. I
say, ‘Go back to your own constituents’”.

Then. The sound of free speech. A black woman shouts “disgraceful” at Boris and the team spring into action: Bailey moves swiftly to placate her while the lofty strawberry-blond walkabout ringleader ushers the rest on, in jolly overdrive. He grabs and then pulls a young peroxide-blond woman across the pavement towards the naturally blond Boris. “Go on. Say you’ll give Boris your vote,” he shouts at the bemused student: “Us blonds have got to stick together.”

Ten metres away, Bailey has finally managed to calm the angry black woman and luckily for the Tories neither seemed to have heard. A campaign strategy based on persecuted blonds might not fly round here.”

Great spot by Boriswatch reader cased: London taxi receipts featuring the Back Boris campaign. Cunning!

Iain Dale, Conservative blogger to the political stars, pleads with the public to accept Boris as the Mayor in this article in the Telegraph. Sure, the article’s main points are great – but my favourite part, I think, has to be the picture…

LondonUnlocked have produced a great regularly-updated article on the policies of each London Mayor candidate. It’ll help make up your mind – not that you needed to, of course.

Click here for the page – and it’s also linked on the sidebar under “Mayor Quick Links” for easy access.

The Guardian has produced a couple of brief videos following each Mayoral candidate around London. Here’s Boris’s:

Video: Boris Johnson on the campaign trail.

And in the interests of fairness (although of course Ken’s nowhere near as good):

Video: Ken Livingstone eyes up a third term in office

Boris gave a speech for lobby journalists on Thursday, and by most accounts the journalistic bunch were impressed. Michael White, assistant editor of the Guardian, liked Boris’s beef in this article, noting the lack of jokes and mentioning applause that broke out for some of his policies. Of course, one man’s bread is another (wo)man’s dough, but there are signs that, if Boris turns off the jokey exterior occasionally, people are surprised by the coherence underneath.