LABOUR’S London Mayoral hopeful Ken Livingstone visited West Finchley Tube station this morning to lay down a challenge to Tory rival Boris Johnson over the performance of the underground.

Mr Livingstone, who held the post for eight years until beaten by Mr Johnson in 2008, used the visit, where he was joined by local councillors and London Assembly member Val Shawcross, to challenge his record on the Tube network.

He told the Times Series: “Everyone who uses the Tube regularly knows it’s worse than it’s ever been in my lifetime. In the six months since last July more people were delayed because of mistakes in running the system.

“ Across the whole network people are more likely to be delayed. These are the worst performance figures since Hitler was bombing London in the Blitz.

“We occasionally used to get a problem when I was Mayor but they were so rare. Now every week it seems there are at least two incidents it seems. The Mayor is not capable of running this service.”

He issued a ‘fair deal for Tube users’ with five points he says he wants Mr Johnson to address, including the communication with passengers, compensation for late trains and ending over-running weekend engineering works.

Ms Shawcross, the deputy mayoral candidate and transport committee chairman for the GLA added: “Boris has increased the fares by above inflation every year he has been in charge and is set to do it for the next 20 years.

“People are right to feel disappointed by Boris. He uses strikes as an excuse but there haven’t been any for the last couple of months and performance is still down.

"He pledged to keep ticket offices and now many have closed for large periods of the day. West Finchley is one of the worst affecte, being open for just two hours a day, and that makes people feel vulnerable.”

A statement for Mr Johnson's campaign accused Mr Livingstone of backing the strikes with his “union backers” labelling them a “callous election ploy to get back into City Hall”.

It added Ms Shawcross had been pictured joining in pickets during one of the strikes.

It said: "It is pure hypocrisy for Mr Livingstone to deliberately mislead commuters by cherry-picking a period when performance dipped solely because of two strikes forced on London by his militant friends.

"These strikes came at a time when a record number of journeys were made on the Tube - more than across the whole of Britain's national rail network - and while thousands were going about their Christmas shopping.

"The majority of London Underground workers did not vote for them and lost pay because of them. But Mr Livingstone and his team supported them, his running mate has even appeared on the picket line, showing his loyalty lies not with Londoners and Tube workers but with his union backers."