Don't attack city chiefs - Boris

He warned against over-regulation of the banking sector, saying it could drive jobs away from the capital.

Mr Johnson said there was "justifiable fury" at the banks over the collapse in the mortgage market but warned the Government could not "regulate its way out of a recession".

He told the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham: "There is justifiable fury at some of the bankers who flogged these mortgages but it worries me when I hear a Labour government - a Labour government that inflated the bubble, that stoked the debt, that schmoozed the financiers, that shamelessly slaughtered sacred socialist cows on the smoky temple of Mammon - suddenly deciding that it would be popular to punish the capitalists and to bring in new regulations to fetter the banks.

"I don't believe that the best way of protecting the hard-working mortgage holders of London is to launch a vindictive attack on one of the most successful industries in this country."

He added: "No matter how much you may resent those masters of the universe, my friends there are plenty of other parts of the universe that would welcome them and the jobs they would bring."

In a sign of his popularity within the party, the packed conference chamber gave Mr Johnson a standing ovation before he began speaking then another when he finished his address.

Party supporters who made it into the conference chamber saw the Mayor give a typically flamboyant performance.

He joked that last year his conference speech was ridiculed by guest speaker, Terminator star and Californian governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Mr Johnson said: "It was a low moment to have my rhetorical skills denounced by a monosyllabic Austrian cyborg. But I can now say to Arnie that in spite of all his doubts, and though there was a great deal of suspense until the final reel, Ken Livingstone was terminated."