The Times hoaxed by a mock mayor

Is there something in the water at the Times? Yesterday Rats in a Sack reported how it had been forced to take down a story about Treasury minister Torsten Bell blowing £900 of taxpayers’ money on a swanky desk when it turned out to be completely untrue.

Now it has taken down an ‘interview’ with Bill de Blasio in which the former New York mayor poured scorn on the frontrunner to take the role next month, Zohran Mamdani. The article was removed when it turned out the interviewee, er, wasn’t de Blasio at all.

“While the ambition is admirable, the cost estimates – reportedly exceeding $7 billion annually – rest on optimistic assumptions… about eliminating waste and raising revenue through new taxes,” the Thunderer’s man in the Big Apple, Bevan Hurley, quoted the former mayor as saying. “In my view, the math doesn’t hold up under scrutiny, and the political hurdles are substantial.”

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Rats in a Sack

The piece was gleefully shared on X by Rich Azzopardi, a spokesman for Mamdani’s rival, the disgraced former governor Andrew Cuomo, who wrote: “Noted fiscal hawk Bill de Blasio gets around to reading @ZohranKMamdani ’s fine print (just kidding, there is no fine print, just glitter and vibes.)”

Now de Blasio has hit back, posting unambiguously: “I want to be 100% clear: the story in the Times of London is entirely false and fabricated. It was just brought to my attention and I’m appalled. I never spoke to that reporter and never said those things. Those quotes aren’t mine, don’t reflect my views.”

And the Times has quickly reverse-ferreted, taking down the story and issuing a statement saying: “The Times has apologised to Bill de Blasio and removed the article immediately after discovering that our reporter had been misled by an individual falsely claiming to be the former New York mayor.”

Hurley himself has yet to comment, which poses just two remaining questions: who, exactly, was he talking to, if not de Blasio – and has the increasingly right wing Times finally lost its mind?