It’s time to call off the aggression and nastiness in this mayoral election campaign

Boris Johnson’s foul-mouthed tirade at Ken Livingstone in a lift at the LBC studios has set a new low. By all accounts he called Ken a ‘f***ing liar’ several times in a lift following the Nick Ferrari show debate. Though it has been portrayed a ‘row’ in fact no one has accused Ken of any threatening or abusive behaviour. It sounds like a four-letter hectoring eruption and it is to Ken’s credit that he remained calm and did not react.

Both main candidates in this campaign are big characters who are going to say colourful, controversial things. And they are going to have robust criticisms of each other, some of which will be about style and personality as well as about policies. Politics can be a bruising business and there is no point pretending otherwise. But when things go beyond the robust to the highly personal and outright aggressive, there is a real risk of alienating the public from this most important of elections.

Boris Johnson’s four-letter tirade seems little different to the ‘you c**t’ attack by Guido Fawkes on a Labour activist, caught on camera just after the blogger and his colleagues crashed into a Ken Livingstone pledge launch at London Bridge, smashing up an LBC radio interview and causing a camerawoman to warn they had nearly broken her neck.

Nor is it an aberration. The Conservative campaign generally has gone ultra-negative. It puts massive emphasis on its ‘Not Ken Again’ website, bill-board poster campaign and print material, scaremongering about Bob Crow and creating a foul temper in the campaign.

There is no doubting the reason for that. If the election is about fares, police cuts and crime, housing and the record of the present mayor, he will lose. Livingstone’s Fare Deal fares cut has the Tories in a frenzy. However, that is not good enough.

If Boris Johnson is genuinely angry about what Ken Livingstone said on Nick Ferrari’s show, he should consider his actions. He, his campaign team, and his leading media-backers are daily targeting Ken Livingstone and his family in the most intrusive and vile terms. Only this weekend one newspaper published, for no apparent reason, the university attended by Ken’s older son – presumably to show there are no boundaries and nothing is off-limits.

It is now in danger of backfiring. Johnson’s image as an upbeat anti-politician who puts a smile on your face will go down in flames if this continues. No politician who unleashes foul-mouthed abuse on anyone is going to look good. But neither will the election process benefit – and that means Londoners won’t benefit. We all share a responsibility to deliver a civil, truthful campaign, with a strong emphasis on the issues of concern to the people of the city. So let’s cool it down – and that means you too, Boris.

Karen Buck is the Labour MP for Westminster North