A Twitter row erupted at City Hall yesterday in the midst of accusations that Boris Johnson hijacked the official London Mayor’s online feed.

Campaigners for rival mayoral candidate Ken Livingstone were outraged after the Conservative politician re-named the official mayor’s account from @MayorOfLondon to @BorisJohnson.

Tweets promoting Mr Johnson’s BackBoris2012 campaign also reportedly appeared on the feed but have subsequently been deleted.

According to Labour, the Twitter account should not be affiliated to any party or individual and should simply serve as a news bulletin for the work done by the mayor.

Labour London Assembly member Len Duvall wrote to City Hall’s monitoring officer this week urging him to intervene on what he described as an “abuse and misuse of resources”.

The switch effectively meant some 253,000 people following the London Mayor’s account automatically became followers of Boris Johnson’s own campaign feed.

A statement issued on behalf of Ken Livingstone's campaign said: "It stinks of the abuse of public resources for the Conservative party to appropriate the official social media of the mayor.

"This is the Mayor of London’s official Twitter feed. The Conservative party is clearly benefiting from tax-payer funded public servants who have built up an official mayoral Twitter feed.

"The London Labour party takes this extremely seriously and is pursuing all avenues. Tories who claim the @mayoroflondon account was only ever maintained by Boris Johnson are trying to hoodwink people."

The mayor’s campaign group were forced into a u-turn yesterday after news of the switch spread across the social networking site and the account has since been changed back.