The big surprise in the race for the London mayoralty has been the apparently well funded campaign by political newcomer, Brian Rose. At one stage he was being traded on the betting exchanges as 7/1 second favourite.

For a month a two he was getting a fair amount of publicity and there were a few canny punters about ready to lay him at what seemed ridiculous odds for a total novice without a party machine.

Quite how Rose got to the level he did in the betting is hard to see but there were backers around ready to stump up the cash to make him stand out as the main challenger to Sadiq Khan.

Now as election day gets closer Smarkets have put the above market up on whether he will get 2% or more of the vote. How humiliating.

The big question for me is whether he will now go to the trouble of getting the requisite number of nominations in each London borough to get himself on the ballot. That must be in doubt.