George Galloway has announced his intention to stand as a candidate in the 2016 London mayoral election. Or has he?

The Respect MP said this week that he wanted to succeed Boris Johnson at City Hall and had formed a “committee which is seriously looking at the prospect of me running”.

Speaking after an interview with Russian television station RT TV, he went on: “I’d like to fight Boris Johnson, and I think David Cameron probably wishes I’d be fighting Boris Johnson because if I’m not, Boris Johnson is back in Parliament fighting him.”

But a spokesman for Mr Galloway later poured cold water on the idea. The MP had, he said, given a “not-too-serious response to a rather facetious question”.

An outspoken critic of Israel and Zionism, Mr Galloway stormed out of a debate at Oxford University in March after discovering that his fellow panellist had dual British-Israeli citizenship.

Adrian Cohen, London Jewish Forum chair, said: “It is difficult to think of anything that would be worse for community relations in our great city than a George Galloway mayoralty.”