All shook up ... rattled Ken compares Boris to Nixon

KEN LIVINGSTONE launched an astonishing attack on Tory rival Boris Johnson today, likening him to disgraced former US President Richard Millhouse Nixon.

Livingstone lashed out after the latest Evening Standard poll put him on 37 per cent, ten points behind Johnson in the race for London Mayor and down seven since January, with his rival up by the same amount.

Though stopping short of calling the opinion poll complete balderdash, untrue and ludicrous conjecture and an inverted pyramid of piffle, he described the findings as "flawed" and questioned the methodology.

However, it was Johnson who felt the full force of his paranoia.

"Basically, Boris Johnson is being managed in the way Nixon was in 1968," he told London Tonight.

"They project an image which bears no relation to reality.

    

"We were all told there'd be a new Nixon; it turned out he was a war criminal and a mass murderer and a liar who was driven from office."

When voters' second preferences are taken into account, the figures look even worse for Livingstone, showing the incumbent trailing Johnson by 56 per cent to 44 per cent.

The poll results also make grim reading for Liberal Democrat candidate Brian Paddick, a distant third on ten per cent, down two from February and up two since the turn of the year.

The election for Mayor of London and the London Assembly takes place on Thursday, May 1st.

• Register to vote - deadline Wednesday, April 16th
• Ken Livingstone
• Boris Johnson
• Brian Paddick