Can you seriously dispute that a number of Boris’s decisions (if it was he who actually took them) have directly led to a need for TfL to raise fares? The most obvious examples are:

1. The abolition of the CO₂ charge, creating a £30-50m black hole in the budget. This at least had the defence that it was a clear manifesto pledge and a small fare rise was an obvious consequence of denying TfL this income so people got what they voted for.

2. The Venezuela farce. If you’re going to abolish a source of income offering £17m a year to fund a specific scheme, you can’t then chicken out of abolishing the scheme it funded! Obviously whichever hard-headed Policy Exchange type pushed through the cancellation of the deal so quickly didn’t consider the possibility that doubling fares for the poor might not be a defensible move, but the upshot is a further £17m black hole.

That’s a black hole of up to £67m already, just from those two. Boris was only claiming an £80m black hole as necessitating the fare rises yesterday, and once you add in the costs of the Western Extension consultation and projections of lost revenue from the middle-of-the-day free period they look like introducing, and the costs of the ridiculous Routemaster competition (not to mention the costs further down the line of actually trying to build and introduce the thing), it’s going to be awfully close to Boris’s £80m figure without needing to bring anything Ken-related into the equation.

Let’s face it, also: Boris is going to quote the highest possible figure he thinks he can back up under scrutiny as to what Ken’s supposed black hole amounts to. The situation therefore is one of the following:

(a) Boris and Ken share the blame for this roughly equally, based on my comments above and the figure quoted by Boris as being attributable to Ken;

(b) Boris (and in the case of manifesto pledges, a million misguided voters) is (are) to blame for the black hole in its entirety, based on the comments by Martin Clarke;

(c) you, or someone else, can explain how all the things I’ve mentioned that have been decided upon since 2 May and clearly and unarguably lead to extra expenditure or reduced income, er, don’t actually do anything of the sort.

I await your explanation of why it is (c) with great interest; in the absence of such, I shall conclude that Boris is indeed lying when he blames Ken alone for the fare rise.

No wonder Boris is having to take tough action now.

In their main article they give Johnson half the space to jusftify the rise. Livingstone is given just one line to defend himself – which completely cuts out the core of his argument.

Their Leader Comment then goes into full-assault mode.

Finally, just for good measure, Johnson is given a column on the same day to explain (blame).

Then again right-to-reply has never been a strong point of the Standard.