Labour's decision not to take Boris Johnson seriously would appear to have been a huge failure, with Boris now at 44% in opinion polls compared to Ken's 39%.

So today that strategy appears to be about to be dropped, with the press widely trailing an attack that Hazel Blears will apparently deliver at Labour's spring conference.

Rather like Hilary Clinton's new found hatred of Barrak Obama in the Democratic contest in the US, this change of strategy smacks of desperation. It also smacks of hypocrisy as, if press reports are to be believed, Blears will criticise Boris for being nasty and for being friends with criminals like Conrad Black.

This from a woman whose own former cabinet colleagues are under investigation by the Metropolitan Police for possible criminal breaches of electoral funding laws and whose Party's own candidate keeps company with the likes of Fidel Castro - the former mass murdering Cuban leader. Boris has made gaffes in his time, but then Ken is no stranger to controversy having been suspended from office in the past for anti-Semitic comments. 

Before jumping out of the frying-pan today, perhaps Labour ought to make sure that they are not heading straight into the fire. Or put another way, people in glass houses should not throw stones. I'll stop the cliched phrases now, but you get the point - the only person who will suffer if Labour attacks Boris on a personal level today will be Ken.