In general, I do not approve of comparing Ken Livingstone with a newt. First, because it is unfair to newts. Just because Ken likes them doesn’t mean they like Ken. They probably loathe him by now but, as newts don’t have mobile phones or press officers, we will never know. I mention this because when the Ken, Boris and Brian roadshow rolled into Westminster, the first thing I was struck by is that Ken is becoming scarily newt-like.

“Have you come to cheer me on?” said the Newt sardonically to Boris as he slithered past on his way into the committee room.

Boris ignored him. “Can we all go in?” cried Boris. “I’m an MP!” He headed through the door. The last candidate to enter was the immaculate suit that is Brian Paddick, Lib Dem manqué.

Ken was up first. I was disturbed to see that he was not drinking whisky. After all, it was already 10.15am. His face leathery and ruddy, his brow furrowed, his tufty hair spikey, as if in a cartoon. He held his elbows beneath the table, making his arms look short (like a newt). His hands flapped away.

The ego is just incredible. Incredible. The subject was policing in London but, within minutes, the subject was Ken and his moral code. I leaned forward, riveted. This is a man who embraced the IRA and who called a Jewish journalist a concentration camp guard.

“My parents gave me a very clear sense of that postwar generation; a sense of what was right or wrong; a sense of responsibility to society. I was taught very early to give your seat up to a woman on the train. Now we have to put stickers up to remind people to do that for pregnant women.”

Ken was now in full flow, voice low, nasal, relentless: “I do think you are looking at a generation today – and this is controversial – these are the children of the kids that grew up in the Eighties when society was talking about ‘Get your snout in the trough’, ‘There’s no such thing as society’, ‘Look after No 1’, ‘Greed is good’, as Gordon Gekko said.”

Gordon Gekko? For a moment, I thought he was talking about his relatives, the likeable lizards of the family Gekkonidae but then I remembered the guy played by Michael Douglas in Wall Street. (Great film, bad moral code: so often they go together.)

Ken wants to give his moral code to parents of the Eighties so that they can raise their children to grow up like him. I had a vision of compulsory showings of Wall Street for all Londoners. Is that a policy? If so, it is the only one I spotted.

Next up was Boris. He didn’t talk about his moral code. He didn’t blame Mrs Thatcher for crime today. He didn’t trash geckos (they voted for Mrs Thatcher, you know) but he is not so keen on newts. Earlier he had called his relations with the mayor “extremely cordial”. For politicians, that is almost war.

Boris talked about buses for, oh, ever. Bus crime. Bus cameras. Bus rowdiness. Bus etiquette. Children and buses. Police on buses. He has, I think, fallen in love with buses, which may be against the moral, if not the traffic, code. He veered off buses, but only briefly, to accuse the mayor of committing theft by stealing his policies.

“What policies?” shouted an MP on the committee.

Why, bus policy, of course. Is there any other?

Next up was Brian Paddick. Almost everyone got up and left. Brian didn’t mind. He is used to it. He is a Lib Dem.

Times Recommends

• Third of Muslim students back killings
• Curfew tames feral yobs of Cornwall
• £3,000-a-month drug free abroad