A Tory candidate at last seems to have entered the fray in terms of expressing interest in the mayoralty. Ivan Massow who is styled as a gay rights campaigner (good), an entrepreneur (good) and a 'media personality' (less good) on Wikipedia threw his hat in the ring on Monday - with the sort of fanfare in the Standard that shows how fairly they will be covering this campaign.

The good news is that Mr Massow is, like me, not a career politician and therefore will come with fresh ideas and a different approach. Indeed, he is already talking about the part pedestrianisation of Oxford Street. #

The bad news is that he seems to have lots to learn on housing. His website says 'London faces a continuing crisis when it comes to housing and we are increasingly in danger of preventing aspirational, hard-working Londoners from owning their own homes.' So far so good but then he reckons the solution is to cut stamp duty at the bottom end of the scale (which will hardly help first time buyers in London because house prices are so high) and to cut red tape (yawn).

His other bright is to 'tackle right to light' - in other words, build higher in order to make better use of available land. That seems to ignore the fact that there are already plans for a couple of hundred skyscrapers in the capital and that it is affordability that is the key issue in the capital - the luxury tower blocks springing up are no use to existing Londoners if sale prices start at £800,000 for one bed apartments, as is the case in Battersea.

Mr Massow therefore seems, like his more experienced Tory colleagues, to completely underestimate the extent of the housing crisis in London and the really urgent measures needed to begin to tackle it.