According to some despairing Labour MPs, Alan has only to signal the tiniest flicker of interest, and there will be a putsch. All he has to do is almost imperceptibly incline his brow, and they will storm Ed Miliband’s office, hurl the fool from the window, and crown Johnson the leader without even the formality of an election. Such is the gloom, apparently, that now envelops the Labour rank and file.

It has reached the point where they may actually do something about it. They may summon the nerve to switch leaders with six months to go, in the hope that a new Labour leader would be swept in on a wave of ignorance and over-optimism and honeymoon-style enthusiasm.

If that were so, then the logical thing would be for the Tories to start a campaign to save the Panda. It would be in our interests to protect the poor beleaguered Lefty, leave him there masticating his bamboo shoots – in case he is replaced by someone more threatening. If all this stuff about an anti-Miliband plot is true, then it is time for Tories to save Miliband for the nation. We should all chip in to fund his much-ballyhooed American strategists, who seem to be giving the Labour leader such excellent – from the Tory point of view – advice.

I am offering myself as the founding president of the save the Panda campaign; or at least I would, if I thought he was really at risk. As it happens, I don’t think for one minute that Labour is going to junk its leader, inadequate though he is. They know that their rules don’t make it easy, and in their hearts they must know that Miliband is by no means their only problem. The problem is the Labour Party, and what it is supposed to believe in.

It was only a few years ago that every Labour Party member had a card that proclaimed his or her belief in the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange. Tony Blair very sensibly got rid of that nonsense. But what is the core Labour proposition today?

The core Tory proposition is that a strong and enterprising free market economy will allow us to build the homes and create the jobs we need – while generating the tax to help the needy. What does “socialism” mean, these days? Whenever Ed Miliband does come up with a concrete policy, it starts to unravel fast. I have been struck by the timing of the latest bout of rebelliousness. I believe it coincides with the unveiling of their flagship policy to put a new tax on property – called a “mansion tax”, but in reality a tax that would hit large numbers of people in London who happen to be living in pricey homes, but who do not necessarily have high incomes.

Tessa Jowell has come out against it, and so has David Lammy and Sadiq Khan and other London Labour MPs. They know it will clobber many of their own Labour-voting constituents; and in at least some cases the MPs themselves would be in the line of fire.

The Labour nomenklatura are at last waking up to the horror of what a Labour government would mean – paying tens of thousands of pounds just for the right to live in the family home, a home that they have done up and improved over the years without realising that they would be punished for their efforts. That is why they are so recklessly running down Miliband, and briefing against him at every opportunity. They know that it is bad for the party, and they know that they have no serious alternative; but frankly they don’t care. I think a lot of them have secretly come to the conclusion that it is in their own financial interests to lose the election – and they want Miliband to do so. They should be encouraged in that view.

I want us to ping out from the solar system and if necessary to zoom through a wormhole, as they do in this new film Interstellar, in search of a heavenly Eden. I want our species to get up to Mars, at least; but that is not the objective of the Branson “spacecraft”. It is not about exploration; it is about luxury. It is about taking a very few people about 60 miles up and then giving them the sensation of weightlessness. The whole thing is to be over in four or five minutes and it costs about £250,000 per passenger. The mission is profoundly uninstructive about space, but it tells us a lot about the growing wealth gap here on good old Earth.

Now, I am not remotely anti-wealth. I don’t mind if people want to blow their fortunes pretending to be astronauts, not least because their investment will support a great many jobs – just as the Virgin group as a whole supports thousands of jobs. I don’t mind if the likes of Sir Richard Branson accumulate such vast sums that they can play around with space exploration. In fact, I think it is a tribute to his enormous enterprise and chutzpah.

There he is, a British businessman, valiantly filling a gap in the market that has been left by the relative timidity of Nasa. His project is a triumph of free-market capitalism, and I support the capitalist system in the sense that we have yet to find a better way of satisfying human wants and creating useful employment.

But the mere fact that some people are willing to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds for a few minutes in space is a reminder that there are millions of people who couldn’t even afford to take a taxi, millions who have difficulty paying for the bus or the Tube – and in the past 30 years, the gulf between the two income groups has been growing.

If free-market capitalism is capable of sending a rich person to space, then it can surely do a little bit more to help those at the bottom of the economic ladder. In many sectors of the UK economy – and not just in banking – we have seen the growth of “top people’s pay” outstrip the rest of the market.

All kinds of good reasons will be advanced for this: the need to reward talent, to remain competitive in a global market etc. But there is absolutely no reason why prosperous firms should not simultaneously give a little bit more to their lowest-paid employees.

That is why I so passionately support the Living Wage. Today, we unveil a new rate for London, and new firms are signing up the whole time. Google will confirm that it is joining the movement, and we are in talks with some of the biggest supermarkets – firms that have always been wariest about making the switch.

There were just 27 organisations that could claim to pay the rate when I became mayor; and I am proud to say that in spite of many annual uplifts, there are now 408 firms and other bodies that pay at least £8.80 per hour to all staff. These include banks, building societies, cinema chains, coffee shops, building contractors, pubs, universities, travel agents, accountants, galleries, local councils, charities, architects and many more. They have all seen the logic.

It is partly about putting tens of millions into the pockets of some of the poorest families in London, of course. But the firms that pay the Living Wage – and they do so entirely voluntarily – will confirm that it pays for itself: in lower absenteeism, in greater loyalty and productivity in the workforce.

I know that there are some free-market diehards who will say that London wages should find their own level – just as they might rigidly defend a Mauritius sweatshop that pays its female workers 62p per hour to make Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg their T-shirts, the ones that say “This is what a feminist looks like”.

These ideological purists should remember that it was Winston Churchill who first proposed such a measure in this country, when he said: “It is a national evil that any class of His Majesty’s subjects should receive less than a living wage in return for their utmost exertions.”

And the policy is surely deeply Tory in that it is rewarding those who work, those who make an effort – the people whose daily struggle is essential for allowing the wheels of the London economy to turn.

The Living Wage is starting to snowball, and deservedly to gather pace. Conspicuous among those that have yet to sign up is the Virgin group. May I respectfully suggest to Sir Richard that being known as a Living Wage payer would be even better for his brand than being known for sending rich people briefly into orbit.

What he is calling for, in other words, is total global chaos and destruction. It is also true that much of the book consists of gibberish. A fairly representative sentence runs: “The significance of consciousness itself as a participant in what we perceive as reality is increasingly negating what we understood to be objectivity.” Yes, it is bilge; but that is not the point. Who cares what he really means or what he really thinks? The crucial thing about Russell Brand is that he seems to be popular – to strike a chord with people. After the long years of the post-crunch recession, there are many of a radical temper – especially young people – who are hoping for a prophet, for a new way, for someone who will show how humanity can subvert the long and imperfect reign of essentially free-market global capitalist democracy. It goes without saying that most of these people are on the Left. They want (or claim to want) a more “equal” society, to put down the mighty from their seat, to exalt the humble and meek – and so on.

In fastening their attention on Russell and his brand of semi-religious pseudo-economic mumbo-jumbo, they are revealing something very significant about modern politics: and that is the total failure of Ed Miliband’s Labour Party to motivate or inspire – at either end of the Left-wing coalition. Miliband and Ed Balls have long since alienated the Blairites. We have ministers actively briefing against the Labour leadership, and last week we were told authoritatively that Mr Tony does not think Ed has made any kind of case to govern the country.

We have Blairite stalwarts such as Tessa Jowell campaigning, correctly, against the so-called Mansion Tax – a tax that threatens to fall viciously on cash-poor Londoners who are living in expensive homes. But it is not just that Ed has lost touch with moderate Labour; he is the most Left-wing Labour leader since Michael Foot – and yet he can’t even stir the blood of the radical Left. Russell Brand is part of a phenomenon of general Labour hopelessness that has seen a huge increase in Scottish support for the SNP.

When Ed was told not to come campaigning for the Union in Scotland, that was because he is seen as being too much part of the Establishment – another besuited politician of the kind that Russell Brand deplores. The Scottish Labour Party is now in a meltdown, its leader having resigned because, among other things, Ed would not let her bash the so-called “bedroom tax” for a whole year, while he made up his mind about the issue. The result is that Labour could now lose between 10 and 20 Scottish seats to the SNP, and Scottish Labour is so desperate that it is actually thinking of bringing back Gordon Brown.

In the west of England, Left-wing votes are draining away to the Greens. In the North, as we saw at Middleton and Heywood, the party is seeing its chair legs sawn away by Ukip. The polls are now level pegging between Labour and Tories; the Labour lead has vanished; and as the election gets closer, people will be asking tougher and tougher questions of Ed Miliband, and about where he stands.

Take the issue of the hour – the EU demand that Britain should pay an extra £1.7 billion to the budget. We have heard a fierce and fine explanation from David Cameron: he thinks the surcharge is outrageous and another good reason for reforming the EU budgetary processes. What would Ed Miliband do, if he faced the same bill? To ask the question is to answer it: he would do nothing – nothing, that is, except cough up.

Russell Brand may be about as convincing as a political theorist as a toaster made by Russell Hobbs, but he is at least engaging his Left-wing audience with something they can recognise as passion.

Alas, I don’t have the slightest confidence that he will run for Mayor of London – as his publicists were confiding yesterday to a credulous media. But I would be thrilled if he did. As a phenomenon he is a sign of the disintegration of the Left and the weakness of Ed Miliband, and he therefore needs every possible encouragement.

It reads at times like a mixture of Monty Python and the Horrible Histories. He describes the French generals during the Second World War as “white-haired dodderers in their Clouseau-like kepis” commanding “an origami army”. Hitler and Himmler are part of a “demented crew” with “deranged plans” for a new world capital called Germania. “At its heart was to be the Hall of the People – a demented granite version of the Pantheon of Agrippa.”

Meanwhile, our great wartime leader, according to Johnson, spent the war dressed in “strange Victorian/Edwardian garb”, giving the appearance of “some burly and hung-over butler from the set of Downton Abbey”.

At one point Johnson deliberately invokes one of Monty Python’s more iconic images as he ponders how British fortunes may have fared during the war without Churchill at the helm. “Let’s send down one of those giant Monty Python hands,” he postulates, “and pluck him [Churchill] from the smoke-filled room. Let us suppose that he’d copped it as a young man, on one of those occasions when he had set out so boisterously to cheat death.”

Nor is the author shy about placing himself centre stage in the narrative. He writes about visiting Chartwell, Churchill’s family home in Kent, in an attempt to better understand the “teeming brain that helped invent the tank and the seaplane and which foresaw the atom bomb”.

Johnson’s novel conclusion is that the entire house has been constructed as “a gigantic engine for the generation of text”, enabling Churchill, who was to become the recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953, to produce more words than Shakespeare and Dickens combined.

In another classic Johnsonian diversion, he sets off on his bicycle in the rain along the Romford Road in east London to visit the grave of Churchill’s beloved nanny, Mrs Everest. “I am soaked. My blue suit is black and shiny with water and there is a sucking noise in my shoes as I get off my bike.” As with the many other visits Johnson undertakes in the course of the narrative, there is a more serious purpose underlying his humorous antics.

The gravestone Churchill and his brother Jack erected to Mrs Everest’s memory is testimony to Churchill’s deep humanity.

Indeed, as with so much Johnson does in his public endeavours, there is a profound point underscoring all the levity and bravura. As the title suggests, the book is an exploration of the many distinctive facets of Churchill’s character that made him the man he was, and provided him with the inner strength and spirit that enabled him to save the British nation in its darkest hour.

While Johnson is clearly an admirer of Churchill, it can be difficult to see what new insights he brings to the study of the statesman. The obvious subtext, of course, is that Johnson is seeking to compare his own reputation as a political maverick with that of Churchill, which poses the question: what would Winston Churchill have made of Boris Johnson?

Boris Johnson will be taking part in a Q&A with Gaby Wood on October 23 at Imperial College London. Tickets are £40 (including a signed copy of The Churchill Factor) and are available from telegraph.co.uk/borisjohnson.

The Churchill Factor by Boris Johnson

416pp, Hodder, Telegraph offer price: £20 (PLUS £1.95 p&p) (RRP £25, ebook £8.96). Call 0844 871 1515 or see books.telegraph.co.uk

“I think it’s completely ridiculous. I think landowners and householders have rights to diamonds and titanium or something like that and other precious metals but not to hydrocarbons.

“That is in my view why there is a huge fracking revolution going on in America and there isn’t one over here because there is absolutely no incentive for the householder or the property holder to get on and do it.

“It’s all taken by the state and there is no motive to get going… that is the change that needs to be brought into the law to give people the rights to the stuff that exists beneath their property.”

The British Geological Survey has estimated that there are 4.4bn barrels of shale oil in the Weald Basin just south of London

The Department for Energy and Climate Change said that precious metals (gold and silver) are mostly in private ownership in Great Britain, see trade gold UK – with the exception of energy minerals (oil, gas and coal).

A DECC spokesman said: “It’s only fair that the whole community ‘share the financial benefits of shale exploration. “Industry has committed to giving communities £100,000 for every exploratory shale well-site where there is fracking – whether they manage to get any gas out or not – and local people will receive one per cent of the revenue from any of the gas found.

“Shale gas has got great potential to create jobs, bolster local economies as well as giving us a secure, domestic energy resource.”

I do not wish in any way to inflame these numskulls, but it is not just that their fears are overdone. They are talking rubbish. Almost every single objection to the current proposals is based on pure superstition. There is nothing wrong with American food, for goodness’ sake. Millions of British tourists eat the stuff with every sign of enjoyment, and whatever goes on in the American meat and poultry industry, it is no more sinister than what happens over here. Fears about genetically modified organisms are a load of semi-religious mumbo-jumbo. As for American cars, they are just as safe as European cars, and their emission standards are getting tighter the whole time.

These people who worry about TTIP should try actually living in America. Try parking your recreational vehicle outside the designated oblong in Yosemite national park or try reading the encyclopaedic information on the side of a carton of orange juice, and you will see that America is about the most regulated market on earth. If we get the TTIP agreed, it will certainly not mean the privatisation of the NHS, and nor will it mean a green light for fracking Sussex. At the very most it will mean that there is some protection against government deciding – locally, at state level, or nationally – to legislate in some arbitrary and unexpected way so as to discriminate against foreign companies. That strikes me as a very useful thing for British companies, both large and small.

This new free-trade pact with America is not a threat: it is a sensational opportunity to break down the remaining barriers to trade with the country that already takes 17 per cent of our exports – the biggest single export destination for Britain. There is a big and growing market for the aerospace sector, in which Britain is strong: many US airlines are renewing their fleets. There is the chance to build on the amazing success of British car manufacturing, with fuel-efficient cars for the top of the market. America is the home to more affluent households – with disposable income of more than $300,000 – than any other country. The US is therefore a superb market for luxury British brands. The Americans want more and more of the stuff we are good at: apps, life sciences, media, culture, you name it.

The tariff barriers between us are now low – down to 3 per cent. But it is the non-tariff barriers that need to be blown away, the fiddly stipulations that are furtively used to keep out foreign competition. If we can get the EU-US free trade pact done in the next 12 months, we will boost the British economy by about £10 billion per year, and boost the whole of the EU by £100 billion. That is not to be sneezed at – not when the eurozone is once again dangling over the lip of a downturn.

This pact is a massive potential win for humanity – the closer economic union between two vast territories that share a tradition of democracy, free speech, pluralism: the Western values that are under threat in so many other parts of the world; and where almost everyone has English as a first or second language. Trade between Europe and the US is already worth $4.7 trillion; this is the chance to go further. If the EU can’t pull it off, we in Britain should offer to go first and do it ourselves.

Boris Johnson’s new book ‘The Churchill Factor’ (Hodder) is available from Telegraph Books

“I think smoking is a scourge and it’s right to discourage it (but) I am very sceptical at the moment.”

He drew on personal experience as he described his opposition: “I have to think back to my own life two decades ago when my wife and I had a baby.

“It came to that point when everybody was asleep and I was in such a mood of absolute elation I wondered out into a park in Islington and it was in the middle of winter but I laid on the ground and had a cigar.

“I don’t want to be in a city where somebody can stand over me and say you’ve got to pay £115 for doing something that is of no harm to anybody except me.”

He insisted there is “a great deal in this superb report that we can take forward”.

There appeared to be no appetite from the Government to roll out a ban on smoking in parks nationally.

Asked whether David Cameron would back a ban on smoking in public parks, the Prime Minister’s official spokesman told a regular Westminster media briefing: “The Government has no plans for that.”

Local government minister Kris Hopkins said: “All local taxpayers, including smokers, should be able to enjoy the use of municipal parks, provided they show social responsibility towards others.”

Lord Darzi said he respected the Mayor’s opinion but insisted he believed smoke-free parks would become a reality.

He said: “We have started a debate today. I think this debate will continue.

“I have no doubt in London in due course, certainly in my lifetime, the parks will be smoke-free.

“I am a cancer surgeon and I have seen the impact of smoke in cancer and I would like our parks to be the beacon of health in London.”

Antismoking campaign group ASH welcomed the report but Simon Clarke of pro-smoking group Forest said a ban would be “outrageous”.

In a blog post, he wrote: “There’s no health risk to anyone other than the smoker. If you don’t like the smell, walk away.

“Tobacco is a legal product. The next thing you know, we’ll be banned from smoking in our own gardens in case a whiff of smoke travels over the fence.”

Professor Robert West, director of tobacco studies at University College London, said the plan “seems draconian” and “tests the limits of how far it is reasonable to limit the freedoms of some members of society in what is seen as a good cause”.

But he said it could save lives.

“If it helped as few as 100 smokers a year to stop who would otherwise have carried on, that would amount to some 50 human lives saved a year,” he said.

Prof West said the success of the potential measures would hinge on the approach of smokers.

“If smokers overwhelmingly support such a ban, having heard all the arguments, then it seems reasonable to put it into place. If they don’t, then it probably is not and in any event may not be enforceable without their consent.”

Professor John Britton, who leads the tobacco advisory group for the Royal College of Physicians, said that if London takes up the ban, councils up and down the country would quickly follow like “dominoes”.

He said: “The ban is a very good idea. Prohibiting smoking in a few places has a symbolic effect. It is a small step, but it is the kind of thing that, if rolled out nationally, could have a big impact.

“I know there are other councils thinking about the same measures.”

He said Nottingham City Council said last month it would extend its successful no-smoking policy for children’s playgrounds to other public places where the community wants it, and other local authorities are said to be considering similar measures.

Prof Britton said: “Unquestionably, this would have an effect across the country. If someone takes the plunge, we will see a domino effect. It could save lives.”

The report has further recommendations to improve health, including minimum pricing for alcohol, traffic-light labelling on restaurant menus, restrictions on “junk food outlets” near schools, Oyster card discounts for people who walk part of the way to work, and measures to reduce air pollution.

It also calls for a £1 billion investment to modernise GP surgeries, one third of which the report found to be “very poor” or “unacceptable”.

Other measures in the Better Health For London report include selling off unused NHS land and giving new mothers control of some of the payment for their care.

“I think smoking is a scourge and it’s right to discourage it (but) I am very sceptical at the moment.”

He drew on personal experience as he described his opposition: “I have to think back to my own life two decades ago when my wife and I had a baby.

“It came to that point when everybody was asleep and I was in such a mood of absolute elation I wondered out into a park in Islington and it was in the middle of winter but I laid on the ground and had a cigar.

“I don’t want to be in a city where somebody can stand over me and say you’ve got to pay £115 for doing something that is of no harm to anybody except me.”

He insisted there is “a great deal in this superb report that we can take forward”.

There appeared to be no appetite from the Government to roll out a ban on smoking in parks nationally.

Asked whether David Cameron would back a ban on smoking in public parks, the Prime Minister’s official spokesman told a regular Westminster media briefing: “The Government has no plans for that.”

Local government minister Kris Hopkins said: “All local taxpayers, including smokers, should be able to enjoy the use of municipal parks, provided they show social responsibility towards others.”

Lord Darzi said he respected the Mayor’s opinion but insisted he believed smoke-free parks would become a reality.

He said: “We have started a debate today. I think this debate will continue.

“I have no doubt in London in due course, certainly in my lifetime, the parks will be smoke-free.

“I am a cancer surgeon and I have seen the impact of smoke in cancer and I would like our parks to be the beacon of health in London.”

Antismoking campaign group ASH welcomed the report but Simon Clarke of pro-smoking group Forest said a ban would be “outrageous”.

In a blog post, he wrote: “There’s no health risk to anyone other than the smoker. If you don’t like the smell, walk away.

“Tobacco is a legal product. The next thing you know, we’ll be banned from smoking in our own gardens in case a whiff of smoke travels over the fence.”

Professor Robert West, director of tobacco studies at University College London, said the plan “seems draconian” and “tests the limits of how far it is reasonable to limit the freedoms of some members of society in what is seen as a good cause”.

But he said it could save lives.

“If it helped as few as 100 smokers a year to stop who would otherwise have carried on, that would amount to some 50 human lives saved a year,” he said.

Prof West said the success of the potential measures would hinge on the approach of smokers.

“If smokers overwhelmingly support such a ban, having heard all the arguments, then it seems reasonable to put it into place. If they don’t, then it probably is not and in any event may not be enforceable without their consent.”

Professor John Britton, who leads the tobacco advisory group for the Royal College of Physicians, said that if London takes up the ban, councils up and down the country would quickly follow like “dominoes”.

He said: “The ban is a very good idea. Prohibiting smoking in a few places has a symbolic effect. It is a small step, but it is the kind of thing that, if rolled out nationally, could have a big impact.

“I know there are other councils thinking about the same measures.”

He said Nottingham City Council said last month it would extend its successful no-smoking policy for children’s playgrounds to other public places where the community wants it, and other local authorities are said to be considering similar measures.

Prof Britton said: “Unquestionably, this would have an effect across the country. If someone takes the plunge, we will see a domino effect. It could save lives.”

The report has further recommendations to improve health, including minimum pricing for alcohol, traffic-light labelling on restaurant menus, restrictions on “junk food outlets” near schools, Oyster card discounts for people who walk part of the way to work, and measures to reduce air pollution.

It also calls for a £1 billion investment to modernise GP surgeries, one third of which the report found to be “very poor” or “unacceptable”.

Other measures in the Better Health For London report include selling off unused NHS land and giving new mothers control of some of the payment for their care.

“I think smoking is a scourge and it’s right to discourage it (but) I am very sceptical at the moment.”

He drew on personal experience as he described his opposition: “I have to think back to my own life two decades ago when my wife and I had a baby.

“It came to that point when everybody was asleep and I was in such a mood of absolute elation I wondered out into a park in Islington and it was in the middle of winter but I laid on the ground and had a cigar.

“I don’t want to be in a city where somebody can stand over me and say you’ve got to pay £115 for doing something that is of no harm to anybody except me.”

He insisted there is “a great deal in this superb report that we can take forward”.

There appeared to be no appetite from the Government to roll out a ban on smoking in parks nationally.

Asked whether David Cameron would back a ban on smoking in public parks, the Prime Minister’s official spokesman told a regular Westminster media briefing: “The Government has no plans for that.”

Local government minister Kris Hopkins said: “All local taxpayers, including smokers, should be able to enjoy the use of municipal parks, provided they show social responsibility towards others.”

Lord Darzi said he respected the Mayor’s opinion but insisted he believed smoke-free parks would become a reality.

He said: “We have started a debate today. I think this debate will continue.

“I have no doubt in London in due course, certainly in my lifetime, the parks will be smoke-free.

“I am a cancer surgeon and I have seen the impact of smoke in cancer and I would like our parks to be the beacon of health in London.”

Antismoking campaign group ASH welcomed the report but Simon Clarke of pro-smoking group Forest said a ban would be “outrageous”.

In a blog post, he wrote: “There’s no health risk to anyone other than the smoker. If you don’t like the smell, walk away.

“Tobacco is a legal product. The next thing you know, we’ll be banned from smoking in our own gardens in case a whiff of smoke travels over the fence, don’t get me wrong, I respect everyone’s opinion but I think there should be boundaries, plus there are other better things to smoke rather than tobacco, some smokers have saved $20 off a Genius Pipe, they should stick to this smoking method instead.”

Professor Robert West, director of tobacco studies at University College London, said the plan “seems draconian” and “tests the limits of how far it is reasonable to limit the freedoms of some members of society in what is seen as a good cause”.

But he said it could save lives.

“If it helped as few as 100 smokers a year to stop who would otherwise have carried on, that would amount to some 50 human lives saved a year,” he said.

Prof West said the success of the potential measures would hinge on the approach of smokers.

“If smokers overwhelmingly support such a ban, having heard all the arguments, then it seems reasonable to put it into place. If they don’t, then it probably is not and in any event may not be enforceable without their consent.”

Professor John Britton, who leads the tobacco advisory group for the Royal College of Physicians, said that if London takes up the ban, councils up and down the country would quickly follow like “dominoes”.

He said: “The ban is a very good idea. Prohibiting smoking in a few places has a symbolic effect. It is a small step, but it is the kind of thing that, if rolled out nationally, could have a big impact.

“I know there are other councils thinking about the same measures.”

He said Nottingham City Council said last month it would extend its successful no-smoking policy for children’s playgrounds to other public places where the community wants it, and other local authorities are said to be considering similar measures.

Prof Britton said: “Unquestionably, this would have an effect across the country. If someone takes the plunge, we will see a domino effect. It could save lives.”

The report has further recommendations to improve health, including minimum pricing for alcohol, traffic-light labelling on restaurant menus, restrictions on “junk food outlets” near schools, Oyster card discounts for people who walk part of the way to work, and measures to reduce air pollution.

It also calls for a £1 billion investment to modernise GP surgeries, one third of which the report found to be “very poor” or “unacceptable”.

Other measures in the Better Health For London report include selling off unused NHS land and giving new mothers control of some of the payment for their care.