I USED TO think Ken Livingstone was a laugh. Many Londoners still do. But when I listen to his irresponsible comments, watch him break his promises with abandon and await with trepidation the extension of the congestion charge zone, it’s not that I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. I know exactly which to do.

The Mayor of London’s behaviour isn’t funny at all. It is dishonest, ill-judged and seemingly without conscience. He even prides himself on being shameless. When challenged by a London Assembly member for being “slippery”, he replied: “I know, it's terrible, I get away with it all the time.” I wasn’t there, but I imagine he had that Livingstonian smirk on his face.

Why do we let him get away with it? Why did we let him nearly double the congestion charge less than two years after saying that he could “not conceive of any circumstances” in which he would have to raise it for ten years? Why are we letting him extend the congestion charge zone, when 80 per cent of businesses and 70 per cent of residents are against the scheme?

We know those figures because Mr Livingstone was forced by law to conduct a consultation before going ahead with the extension. Sadly, though, he wasn’t forced to take any notice of it, and he admitted to a meeting of business people that the consultation was “a complete charade”. He was going to extend the zone whether Londoners liked it or not.

If congestion were really a problem in West London, half the residential streets would not have speed bumps on them. Cars drive too fast there, not too slowly. Department for Transport figures show that traffic levels in the area have been falling for years and are now lower than they were in 1994.

An RAC Foundation survey recently found that the worst congestion was in streets in North, East and South London. As Edmund King, executive director of the foundation, says: “There is no possible logic for singling out West London for this proposed extension. There are many other areas that are far more congested. Many key routes that cross the proposed new charging zone have very little congestion at all. Without people coming into the district, many by car, the area would die.”

I suppose Mr Livingstone doesn’t care that thousands of small, independent shops and businesses, which thrive in West London, will be badly hit by the extension. Why pay £8 to shop in Kensington, Chelsea or Notting Hill if you can drive free to Chiswick, Hammersmith or Richmond instead?

Nor can he care much about congestion in the existing zone since, once the extension takes place next February, residents of Kensington and Chelsea will be able to drive anywhere they like in both zones, paying only 10 per cent of the charge: £4 a week instead of £40. In other words, rich investment bankers will be able to drive to and from work, while poorer people will be excluded from the nicest shopping areas in London unless they can carry everything home on the bus. Is this really socialism in action?

Once these Kensington and Chelsea drivers — 70,000 of them — can bring their cars into the existing zone, congestion will become terrible. In fact, it is pretty terrible already. Although Transport for London claims that traffic and congestion levels have fallen by just over 20 per cent since the charge was introduced, anecdotal evidence doesn’t bear this out at all. My experience of driving across Central London twice and sometimes four times a day on weekdays suggests that, while traffic sped up initially, it has now slowed right down to pre-charge levels. With all those K&C residents driving around too, it will soon be faster to walk. Perhaps that is what Mr Livingstone is trying to achieve.

It is not as if the extension even makes economic sense. A system used by the Department for Transport has rated it “poor” value for money. Clearly Mr Livingstone doesn’t care about that either.

Bizarrely, he even claimed this week that he didn’t care about a convicted terrorist working on the Tube, with access to Jubilee Line tunnels below the Houses of Parliament. When told by an Evening Standard reporter that Mohammed Kamel Mostafa, the son of Abu Hamza, had been convicted for terrorist offences in Yemen, the Mayor replied: “The question is, has he broken any laws here in Britain? The answer is no. We are happy to have him working for us.”

Later in the day, Mr Livingstone must have realised how crazy this statement was, and conducted a swift U-turn. But it was a telling example of his tendency to make crass comments without thinking through their implications.

The crassness extends to gratuitous insults too. The mayor famously compared a Jewish reporter to a concentration camp guard, even after been told of the journalist’s religion. He told a pair of Jewish property developers, the Reuben brothers, that if they didn’t like his planning regime: “They can go back to Iran and try their luck with the ayatollahs.” He later claimed that he didn’t know David and Simon Reuben were Jewish. I suppose he thinks Seamus O’Callaghan is a German Protestant.

Mr Livingstone cannot be trusted to run London. He swore blind that he would not stand as an independent against a Labour candidate, and then did so. He said only “some ghastly, dehumanised moron” would want to get rid of the Routemaster bus. They are now virtually extinct, thanks to Ken. London badly needs an alternative. Can’t the Conservatives or the Liberal Democrats find a decent candidate for Mayor of London?

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