I’m very struck by a section of the Standard’s report today into Boris Johnson’s failure to deliver his drinking fountain pledge.

Darren Johnson, the Green Assembly member, had raised the issue.

The Standard first reports:

The Mayor ordered Sir Simon Milton, his chief of staff, to investigate sites [for drinking fountains] and potential costs in June last year, saying: “If this place is generally getting hotter and people are going off buying bottled water I think we should have a new era of public fountains.”

But today it emerged that there is no money set aside to deliver the plan, despite the Mayor having allocated £6 million to improve parks across the city in a scheme called Help a London Park.

He also failed to set out plans for water fountains in his recent draft water strategy for the capital.

But Katharine Barney’s report then goes on to say:

“One water fountain was opened in Hyde Park last week, the first in the park for 30 years, but the lack of overall action is the latest in a series of U-turns and delays in policy by the Mayor.

“Last week he was forced to admit the removal of the western extension of the congestion charge could be delayed by up to a year, and he has also said his pledge to reinstate the tidal flow at Blackwall Tunnel was proving more difficult than anticipated.”

The line in bold and what follows is the part that will be giving the mayor’s press team its biggest worry.

It reads a lot like the Standard has got the bit between its teeth following the chaos over the congestion charge western extension last week. It also reads like the Standard is intent on firing some warning shots across the mayor’s bows.

Johnson’s administration went into a mad scramble last week to deal with the almighty headache of the Standard’s report questioning whether the abolition of the western extension would really go ahead. That the story originated from a briefing from the mayor’s own transport adviser, Kulveer Ranger, must have added to the fury in the mayor’s office.

Quite what Ranger was doing giving a statement to the Standard that presumably was not cleared is anyone’s guess.  This itself looks pretty amateurish. But he accidentally let the cat out of the bag. The truth is, the state of London’s transport finances ought to have made the mayor think twice about cutting off a £50m-£70million revenue stream. The rumours are that that’s exactly what he has been doing.

Johnson was so agitated about reassuring his own core supporters that he tweeted and press-released like crazy to say that the extension was still doomed. Yet he has caused irritation amongst many of those supporters as a result of the length of time it is taking him to remove the western extension, a situation exposed by the Standard’s story.  The Standard has also returned to the fray on this front today, with a report by Ross Lydall about potential legal challenges arising from Johnson’s blitz aimed at calming Tory nerves last Wednesday.

The whole issue of why Johnson has failed to move quickly on this key Tory policy is one that deserves a bit more exploration. It looks to me like a straightforward case of incompetence.

Indeed, this incident contains the unfortunate element of the question of competence, an unwelcome narrative for the Johnson regime.

By all accounts City Hall went ballistic last week when the story first appeared. At one point they appeared even to be denying that Ranger had said what the Standard said he had said. The Standard seems to have decided to hold its ground. Having drawn blood it has come back for another bite. The story is crystallising around the charge that Johnson is failing to keep his promises and failing to take real action across a number of areas.

To the Standard’s example of the Blackwall tunnel and the western extension delay (as well as the drinking-fountain skirmish) we may also add the no-strike deal on the tube, and running the tube later at the weekends. Then there is the question of whether he will meet his commitment on the building of affordable homes. He has reneged over his funding pledge on rape crisis centres.  His election campaign claims of support for the Low Emission Zone are now demonstrated to have been a deception.

It is a potentially very rich seam to be mined.

On the western extension, Johnson is in the worst of all worlds. He has refused to take the financially prudent and politically brave step of keeping the western extension, thus increasing the pressure on fares; he has been caught out failing to deliver quickly and competently on a pledge that many in his own grass roots most demand; and he has got himself into a head-to-head row with the Standard over it.

What will most worry him and his advisers is what this flashpoint has signified.

The Standard has a clear story to tell, about broken or ineptly carried out promises, or policies that do not appear to stack up in quite the positive and glossy way they were presented by Johnson when he was an untested insurgent.

If the media keeps telling this story, it won’t be good news for the mayor.

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UPDATE 29 September, 10am:

Roy Greenslade has blogged about all this today here and Dave Hill has commented this morning here.