(Updated on May 3 with new headline, election results, reaction and photos)

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The man described by some as a joke, by others as a brilliant mind has ended Ken Livingstone’s eight-year reign at City Hall.

The verdict is still out on what exactly Boris Johnson’s victory means for the Conservative Party overall but his performance as mayor could help determine whether people will vote for the Tories in a general election next time.

Johnson, whose experience of running big projects is limited, will lead one of the world’s most high-profile cities with an 11.3 billion pound budget to run public transport, police and fire services and promote the economy of this global financial centre.

The Labour Party may be hoping that the gaffe-prone “blond bombshell” will prove incapable of doing the job and thus damage the Conservatives chances of winning the next election. Johnson will have to get cracking soon with strong policies to bolster his image and become the ambassador that the Tories need him to be as the capital’s mayor.

Johnson paid generous tribute to Livingstone in his victory speech, describing him as “a very considerable public servant” and acknowledging that many who had voted for him had been wavering when it came to casting their votes.

“You shaped the office of mayor. You gave it national prominence and when London was attacked on 7 July 2005 you spoke for London,” Johnson said after he was declared winner in what had turned out to be a marathon vote count lasting well over 12 hours, partly due to a record turnout of 45 percent.

Livingstone in return offered to help Johnson and said that the responsibility for his defeat lay with him and him alone.

The Conservative candidate won with 1,168,738 first and second preference votes, compared with Livingstone’s 1,028,966.

Source: London Elects

The Johnson victory in London has added to Conservative delight at pushing Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s Labour Party to its worst performance on record in local elections elsewhere in England and Wales.

Senior Conservative sources said they would be “gobsmacked” if Johnson did not win the mayoral contest, the Daily Telegraph said.

Even Minister for London Tessa Jowell conceded as we waited for the final result: “You’re absolutely right that it looks, at the moment, as if Boris Johnson is ahead,” she told the BBC.

Confidence of a Tory win was boosted after one bookmaker announced it was paying out on a Boris Johnson victory hours before the official result is expected later this evening.

Opinion polls had put Livingstone and Johnson neck-and-neck, with LibDem candidate Brian Paddick a distant third.

Should Shakespeare be a factor for Londoners voting for their next mayor on May 1?

The three leading mayoral candidates revealed their knowledge of the Bard on Friday in a live phone-in debate with host Vanessa Feltz on her BBC London morning radio show .

Asked by “David in Finchley” which Shakespearian character best described them, London Mayor Ken Livingstone said he would like to be associated with Julius Caesar .

“Trouble is, I’m sitting next to a couple of Brutuses,” he japed.

Conservative rival Boris Johnson said he hoped to be likened in future to Pericles.

“Pericles, of course, was responsible for the rejuvenation of Athens … and the wonderful thing about the Athenian system was its democracy.

“Everybody had the chance to vote and to decide the future of the policy, as they do on May 1, and that’s why I hope that Londoners in a Periclean way will vote for change for the better,” Johnson said, warming to his theme.

Liberal Democrat ex-policeman Brian Paddick opted out of the contest, protesting he didn’t know enough about Shakespeare to choose a role model. (”Come on,” cried Felz. “You’ve got a degree from Oxford.”)

“Lady Macbeth?”, suggested Livingstone. “Screw your courage to the sticking place, Brian,” said Johnson — an Oxford Classics scholar — quoting the Scottish play .

But it was the candidate without a degree that spotted Johnson’s Shakespearian trickery.

“I think we just caught Boris out,” said Livingstone. “The play Pericles by Shakespeare is not about Pericles, the ancient Greek, is it?”

“I don’t want to disappoint the mayor,” admitted a rueful Johnson. “He’s actually completely right. The Pericles in question is of course Pericles, Prince of Tyre.”

After the broadcast Johnson was unrepentant about his debating dodge, telling me he was just “taking liberties” with the title of the Shakespeare play, about a shipwrecked prince.

“It’s not the same Pericles, but it doesn’t matter. I was just using the name.”

Livingstone was delighted: “I never thought I’d catch Boris out on a classical anything.”

Which Shakespearian characters do you think the candidates most resemble?

Reuters Online invited readers to send in their questions to the four leading candidates in the Mayor of London election.

Transport and the Congestion Charge dominated your questions, but you also wanted to know about race relations.

Here are the answers from Labour’s Ken Livingstone, Conservative Boris Johnson, LibDem Brian Paddick and the Green Party’s Sian Berry.

For Ken Livingstone’s answers, read here

For Boris Johnson’s answers, read here

For Brian Paddick’s answers, read here

For the Sian Berry’s answers, read here

Liberal Democrat candidate Brian Paddick admits he lacks the name-recognition status enjoyed by Ken Livingstone and Boris Johnson in what many regard as a personality contest to be elected Mayor of London.

But the man once styled “the UK’s most senior openly gay police officer” told me at a Reuters Newsmaker event that he plans to boost his personal image in the countdown to the May 1 vote.

“I was a police officer for 30 years. And what we are taught in the police is to give our evidence in court without showing any emotion, any animation, absolutely deadpan, dead straight,” he said.

“It’s going to take me a while to come out of my shell, but I think we are going to see in the next week or so what that means.

“There are a few surprises coming up and I am sure people by the end of this campaign will be saying that I am just as much a personality as the other two.”

What can he mean?

In the first televised debate between the three main London mayoral candidates, we learned that former police chief Brian Paddick would not accept a job in a rival’s administration.

Paddick, who needs a huge swing in support to have any chance of election, has said that as mayor he would personally chair the Metropolitan Police Authority, which oversees the capital’s police.

But the Liberal Democrat candidate’s reply was quite clear when asked on BBC’s Newsnight whether he would serve under a re-elected Mayor Ken Livingstone, if offered the chance of running London police policy.

“No, I would not,” Paddick told host Jeremy Paxman during Tuesday’s programme.

“When I left the police I promised myself that I would only take advice, I would not take orders any more.”

We also learned that Livingstone would vote for Paddick — if forced to choose between him and the Tory runner Boris Johnson.

Perhaps little surprise there, but Labour’s Livingstone was the only one to answer Paxman’s question — which of the other two candidates would they vote for if they couldn’t vote for themselves.

Johnson “couldn’t possibly comment”, while Paddick couldn’t decide, saying his rivals were “bad in different ways”.

Every time Labour ministers call the Conservative candidate for London mayor by first name alone they’ll have to pay £5 into a ’swear box’.

“What we have to avoid is a situation where people think this election is a joke and that the future of London is not serious,” Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell told Sky News.

If this is all about taking the upcoming election seriously though, why has there been no similar decree regarding “Ken” (Livingstone), the equally maverick Labour candidate? And what will Labour do with all the money it makes from ministers who slip up?

Brian Paddick criticises the suggestion that Conservative London mayor candidate Boris Johnson could run the capital as a kind of chairman supported by expert advisers.

“I think a lot of people are prepared to entertain the idea of Boris Johnson as mayor on the assumption that he will be surrounded by advisers, who will effectively run London for him,” the Liberal Democrat candidate said in an interview with Reuters.

“If you allow your personal advisers that amount of power, you end up with the sort of allegations of corruption that Ken Livingstone has had to face.”

Click on video below | You can read a longer interview here

[flv:http://int1.fp.sandpiper.net/reuters42/mojo/2008/04/03042008048-001.flv 314 235]

Last week in an interview with Reuters Ken Livingstone dismissed his rival Boris Johnson’s 12 point lead in the race for London Mayor in a YouGov poll as a quirk, resulting from its method of surveying voters over the internet.

He said a Guardian ICM poll using more traditional methods — telephoning a sample of voters — would show him in a much better position.

He would appear to have been proved correct — the poll, published online on Wednesday evening, shows he has narrowed the gap with Johnson to just 2 points, once second preference votes are counted.

The poll forecasts a narrow victory in the election on May 1 for Johnson with 51 percent of final votes and Livingstone on 49 percent.

On first choice votes the gap is even slimmer, with Johnson on 42 percent, Livingstone on 41 percent and Liberal Democrat Brian Paddick trailing far behind on 10 percent.

Sitting at the Evening Standard’s London Mayor debate last night, it occurred to me how cosy this election is. Whoever wins the contest on May 1 will lead one of the world’s most high-profile cities with an 11.3 billion pound budget to run public transport, police and fire services and promote the economy of this global financial centre. Yet at times the candidates seem to think they are engaging in some kind of school debating contest.

First there was breathless Boris, who bounded up to the podium like a precocious teenager and raced through his speech to cram in as much as possible during his allotted eight minutes. Then a more nervous, and far less exuberant delivery from the class swot — Brian Paddick — the former policeman turned Lib Dem mayoral candidate, who delivered a serious and earnest “Why I should be head boy” speech.

Throughout Paddick’s speech, Boris and Ken whispered to each other on the podium as if they thought they were at the back at the class and couldn’t be seen. Boris could barely contain his glee when Paddick slipped up in his bid to assert his desirability over a candidate (Johnson) who spends his time at the “Henry” regatta. His conflation of Henley with the Hooray Henries associated with Johnson’s consituency prompted a barely disguised giggle from Boris and his supporters.

Then came Ken, who looked a little beyond the city’s borders to place London in its global context: “The things we do in the city set the agenda for the world,” he told the audience of “influentials” in west London’s Cadogan Hall.

But still, it was difficult to shake the sense that this election contest is more village hall than City Hall. Questions and answers centred around the congestion charge, beat police officers, free travel passes for the under-16s and preserving gardens. It was only at the end that we got a real sense of the scope of this newly created role when columnist Simon Jenkins asked what vision the candidates had for the city. The answer seems to be not too many skyscrapers but well-designed ones are OK. The future of London as a world financial centre seemed less clear.

How will Ken Livingstone, Boris Johnson, Brian Paddick or Sian Berry spend London’s annual 11 billion-pound budget if they are elected mayor on May 1?

How will they tackle youth crime and congestion,  and how will the capital maintain its position as a global cultural and financial hub?

The budget is in their hands, but you can quiz them on how they will spend it.

The four leading candidates in the Mayor of London election have agreed to answer your questions.

We asked you to send in your questions, and have now sent a selection to the relevant candidates.

Their answers will be posted here on April 24.