Ken wants Londoners to pay 2p extra income tax

The Mayor, whose share of council tax has risen by about 150 per cent since he came to office, would reverse the tax cut granted last month in Gordon Brown's Budget.

This would be combined with a tax hit on City "fat cats" who earn £1 million-plus salaries and wealthy Russians and other in-comers, who would be allowed to vote in return. Mr Livingstone, who takes £303 a year in tax from an average London household, said: "I'd like to abolish the council tax and replace it with a local income tax."

He added: "I do think that someone who has got a million-pound bonus could afford to give us a few quid more for London, because that bonus has been built on London's success."

In an interview for The Times, he describes the current centralisation of powers in the Treasury as " Stalinist" because 97 per cent of tax is collected and redistributed by Whitehall.

He has been a long-term advocate of scrapping council tax and replacing it with the Liberal Democrat idea of a local income tax - which he believes is fairer as it is linked to the ability to pay - but today's intervention is thought to be the first time he has put a figure on the alternative levy.

This would have the effect of returning the basic tax rate to 22p in the £1 - which the Chancellor recently cut to 20p. On the centralisation of power in Whitehall, he said: "It is not the failings of capitalism, they are much more failings of government.

"When I told the mayor of Moscow that 97 per cent of all tax is collected by the Chancellor and then disbursed, he said: 'That's worse than us under Stalin'. And that's true.

"I am a federalist. I have been in favour of a federal state for the past 30 years because I recognise that Whitehall does not work." He wants Russians and other wealthy investors to become the new Victorian philanthropists. "This is effectively their home. I would like to see them not just buying the odd football club, but sponsoring major cultural events."

In the interview, he appears to accept that Labour will be ousted by the Tories at the next election - and wants preparatory work to be done with David Cameron, assuming Mr Livingstone is returned as Mayor next year.

He defended the decision to give former Transport for London commissioner Bob Kiley a £737,500 consultancy deal, despite Mr Kiley admitting to the Standard that he was an alcoholic who did "not much" for his money.

"Bob Kiley was the best investment we ever made. We paid him half a million pounds a year and ... he identified over a billion pounds of waste."